A West Papuan leader has accused Indonesia of imposing a “martial law” on the Melanesian region in response to the kidnapping of a New Zealand pilot by rebels fighting Jakarta’s contested rule.
“It is clear that Indonesia is using the kidnap of New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens as a pretext to strengthen their colonial hold on West Papua,” said United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) interim president Benny Wenda.
Mehrtens was taken hostage on February 7 in the Papuan Highlands and has featured in video demands for independence.
“[Indonesian security forces] are creating and exploiting violence to further depopulate our villages and create easier access to our resources through corporate developments like the Trans Papua Highway.
“This is all part of a 60-year colonial land grab,” claimed Wenda in a statement.
He said that in Intan Jaya, Puncak Jaya, and Nduga, Indonesian soldiers were “roaming the countryside, conducting arbitrary house searches, beating Papuan civilians, and even murdering women and children”.
Papuan shot dead
Wenda said that near Wamena, a Papuan named Stefanus Wilil was shot dead at random while crossing a road.
“Women and young girls have been raped, churches have been burnt by soldiers, and 16 villages in the Intan Jaya Regency have been abandoned by terrified inhabitants.
“My people are living in mortal fear of the next beating, the next murder, the next massacre.
“Everyone is a target: whether it is because they have a beard or Rasta culture, wearing dirty clothes, or carrying an axe or shovel to tend their gardens — every Papuan is under automatic suspicion.
“Hundreds have been forced to flee their homes by roving military bands acting with total impunity.”
Taking refuge
Wenda said they were taking refuge in the forests, where they lacked food, water, and “basic medical facilities”.
“But even there they are not safe, with armed police occupying every corner of the Papuan countryside, transforming the land into a hunting ground for Indonesian troops.”
“Indonesia killed us with guns and bombs dropped from helicopters, but also with malnutrition and crop destruction.
“Even as a child I knew that my life was worthless to the colonial forces. The genocide and ethnic cleansing of West Papua is still neglected, as the massacre of 10 Papuans in Wamena in February proves.”
Up to 100,000 displaced
According to UN figures, between 60,000 and 100,000 West Papuans have been displaced over the past four years.
Wenda said his movement’s peaceful demands to Indonesia were:
Allow aid agencies to treat victims of forced displacement;
Allow the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights into West Papua, as had been demanded by more than 84 countries;
Allow international journalists to report on the situation in West Papua;
Draw back Indonesian troops to allow civilians to return to their lives; and
Release all political prisoners — including 80 activists who had been arrested for handing out leaflets demanding political activist Victor Yeimo be freed, Victor Yeimo himself, and three students detained without charge last year.
Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson . . . he might soon have a largely new TVNZ board, as well as new CEO, as he refines his public broadcasting strategy. Image: Matthew Scott/Newsroom
Axing the proposed merger of TVNZ and RNZ saved the New Zealand government a significant amount of money but left it with the problems the merger was supposed to fix. Newsroom co-editor Mark Jennings looks at Labour’s new slimmed down approach to public media.
ANALYSIS: By Mark Jennings
Until weeks ago, the future of Aotearoa New Zealand’s public media organisations was looking so grim the government was prepared to spend $370 million over four years to merge TVNZ and RNZ and future proof the new entity it was calling ANZPM.
Last December, when the merger plan was under intense scrutiny, then Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern said RNZ “could collapse” if the merger did not go ahead.
Last week, Labour unveiled a very modest plan to strengthen public media. The old, very expensive one, had been thrown on the policy bonfire back in February.
The “burn it” decision had been widely anticipated after new PM Chris Hipkins’ started dumping unpopular policies to focus on cost of living issues.
Broadcasting Minister Willie Jackson stayed on message when he released the new public media plan last week. “We have listened to New Zealanders and now is not the right time to restructure our public media.”
Under the new plan RNZ will get $25 million more a year, NZ On Air will get a one-off boost of $10m for 2023/24 and TVNZ will get nothing.
Jackson claims the extra money will “deliver world class public media for all New Zealanders.” This seems improbable given the earlier dire predictions.
The additional $25 million a year for RNZ represents a 60 percent increase in its funding. It sounds a lot but the broadcaster has been under resourced for the past 15 years.
Coping with pandemic
When National came to power in 2008 it froze RNZ funding for 9 years. The state broadcaster did get an increase from the Ardern government but it has had to contend with the additional costs of reporting on and coping with the covid-19 pandemic.
Lately, the demands of covering the Auckland floods and cyclone Gabrielle have stretched it further. Newsroom understands RNZ is currently running a deficit of close to $5 million.
The lack of funding is illustrated by the rundown premises RNZ occupies nationwide, its ageing equipment and out-of-date IT systems. Under constant financial pressure it has struggled to attract and keep top journalists.
Some of its best and brightest have been lured away to TVNZ, Newshub, Newsroom and Stuff.
Jackson’s media release said $12 million of the extra funding was for current services and $12 million for a new digital platform. $1.7 million is to support AM transmission so people can access information during civil emergencies.
Stuff, the NZ Herald and RNZ itself all reported (presumably from the media release) on the funding for the new multimedia digital platform. But there is no new platform. This was either clumsy language or a clumsy attempt at spin from Jackson and his comms people.
RNZ’s chief executive Paul Thompson told Newsroom the money would be used to make improvements to RNZ’s existing web platform and mobile app.
‘Fixing things’
“It is kind of fixing things that should have been fixed a long time ago. Our website and app are serviceable and do a good job but if we are going to be relevant in the future we need to be better than that.”
Thompson says the increase in the amount of baseline funding was calculated to restore RNZ to its former state, more than anything else.
“How much would it take us to stabilise our current operations and get them to where they need to be, so that’s well overdue. It is everything from our premises through to our content management systems, to our rostering — just having enough staff to do the job we do. It’s sufficient but we are going to have to spend every penny very wisely.”
A big part of the government’s reasoning for the merger was that minority audiences are under-served by the media.
Jackson now seems to expect RNZ to do the heavy lifting in this area. His media release quoted him saying the funding would allow RNZ to expand regional coverage and establish a new initiative to prioritise Māori and Pacific coverage.
Asked how he planned to do this, Thompson was circumspect. “It has got to be worked out . . . we are going to have to prioritise, we can’t do it all at once.”
Jackson wants other media to play an (unspecified) role in reaching these audiences. He has restored $42 million of funding to NZ On Air. Under the merger plan this money, which was the amount NZOA spent funding TVNZ programmes (mainly drama, comedy and off-peak minority programmes), was being handed to ANZPM to decide how it should be spent.
Production community upset
The local TV production community was upset by this as it far preferred NZ On Air to be the gatekeeper and not TVNZ executives who would likely end up working for the merged organisation.
Jackson has also given NZOA a one-off boost of $10 million for 2023/2024.
“The funding will support the creation of high-quality content that better represents and connects with audiences such as Māori, Pasifika, Asian, disabled people and our rangatahi and tamariki. It is vital that all New Zealanders are seeing and hearing themselves in our public media,” he said in his media release.
One-off funding can be of limited benefit. It usually has to be project-based rather than supporting ongoing programming and the staff that go with it. It is possible Jackson is hoping or expects NZ On Air to use more of its baseline funding to sustain new shows and programmes for minorities.
On the same day as Jackson’s announcement, but with less fanfare, NZOA released its own revised strategy.
The document says, above all, funded content must have a “clear cultural or social purpose.”
Priority will be given to songs and stories that contribute to rautaki (strategy for) Māori, support a range of voices and experiences, including those of people from varying ages, races, ethnicities, abilities, genders, religions, cultures, and sexual orientations.
Unclear about TVNZ
It is unclear where Jackson’s plan B leaves TVNZ. Throughout the merger discussions TVNZ executives, while saying they embraced the idea, were critical of the draft legislation, the level of independence the new entity would have and they often emphasised TVNZ’s commercial success.
Jackson has, on a number of occasions, linked TVNZ to the National Party which opposed the merger and was committed to rolling it back if elected in October.
When he became frustrated in an interview with TVNZ’s Jack Tame, before the merger was abandoned, Jackson used the line “your mates in National”.
During question time in Parliament last week, when asked what more he was doing to strengthen public media, Jackson said he was going to “sit down with Simon and the National Party mates over there.”
He was referring to TVNZ CEO, and former National Party minister, Simon Power.
Jackson said he wanted TVNZ to play a more active role in public broadcasting and, “we are going to traverse things with Simon in terms of a way forward.”
Power recently announced his resignation and will leave TVNZ in June. With many of the TVNZ board, including its influential chair Andy Coupe, likely to retire or be replaced in the next month, Jackson will, in reality, be sitting down with a new board and CEO to discuss his public media ambitions for TVNZ.
If he is interested in the job, RNZ’s Thompson must now be in with a real chance.
Thompson unequivocally endorsed the merger idea and was almost the only advocate able to clearly articulate its benefits. A new board, eager to take the company in a direction more sympathetic to its owner’s vision, might find that attractive.
Mark Jenningsis co-editor of Newsroom. Republished with permission.
Jackson claims the extra money will “deliver world class public media for all New Zealanders.” This seems improbable given the earlier dire predictions.https://t.co/pzd1Ukw5JD
Nour Odeh, political analyst and former spokeswoman for the Palestinian National Authority, on Al Jazeera's Inside Story . . . "it is relentless . . . and one factor that remains constant is that Israel can get away with all of this." Image: AL screenshot APR
COMMENTARY: By John Minto
The last fortnight has seen a series of brutal, deliberately provocative Israeli attacks on Palestinian worshippers at Al Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
Needless to say, Israel had no business interfering in Muslim worship at Al Aqsa, the third holiest shrine for Muslims after Mecca and Medina, and an area which is not under their authority or control.
Despite this, Israeli attacks on Al Aqsa have intensified in recent years as the apartheid state strives to undermine all aspects of Palestinian life in Jerusalem. It is applying ethnic cleansing in slow motion.
Inevitably missile attacks on Israel from Gaza and Southern Lebanon followed and Israel has reveled in once again trying to portray itself to the world as the victim.
There is an excellent 10-minute video in which former Palestinian spokesperson Hanan Ashrawi more than held her own against a hostile BBC interviewer here.
📽️ WATCH | A masterclass by @DrHananAshrawi illuminating the everyday violence & aggression Palestinians endure at the hands of Israel’s occupation, the inevitable local resistance to it & Israel’s ongoing impunity while also fending off @BBCWorld‘s spurious line of questioning. pic.twitter.com/eTpvXV7QbI
There is also an excellent podcast produced by Al Jazeera which backgrounds the increase in violence in the Middle East.
Inside Story: What triggered the spike in violence? Video: Al Jazeera
Nour Odeh – Political analyst and former spokeswoman for the Palestinian National Authority.
Uri Dromi – Founder and president of the Jerusalem Press Club and a former spokesman for the Israel government.
Francesca Albanese – United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Further background on the politics around Al Aqsa is covered in this Al Jazeera podcast.
I strongly condemn Israel’s excessive use of force against Palestinian Muslims praying at #AlAqsaMosque during Ramadan, & its breaches of the #StatusQuo. This recklessness risks bringing further devastation to both sides of the Green Line.
Full statement: https://t.co/ys58j0bIzthttps://t.co/mWfJiHSVaT
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) April 6, 2023
Initially reporting here in New Zealand was reasonable and clearly identified Israel as the brutal racist aggressors attacking Palestinian civilians at worship. However, within a couple of days media reporting deteriorated dramatically with the “normal” appalling reporting taking over — painting Palestinians as terrorists and Israel as simply enforcing “law and order”.
At the heart of appalling reporting for a long time has been the BBC which slavishly and consistently screws the scrum in Israel’s favour. The BBC does not report on the Middle East – it propagandises for Israel.
Journalist Jonathan Cook describes how the BBC coverage is enabling Israeli violence and UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, called out the BBC’s awful reporting in a tweet.
Renewed violence against Palestinian worshippers at #AlAqsaMosque on yet another Ramadan turned into suffering,must be condemned,investigated & accounted for.
Misleading media coverage 👇contributes to enabling Israel’s unchecked occupation & must also be condemned/accounted for https://t.co/JI6YzNgCju
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) April 5, 2023
It’s not just the BBC of course. For example The New York Times has been called out for deliberately distorting the news to blame Palestinians for Al Aqsa mosque crisis.
It’s not reporting — it’s propaganda!
Why is BBC important for Aotearoa New Zealand? Unfortunately, here in Aotearoa New Zealand our media frequently and uncritically uses BBC reports to inform New Zealanders on the Middle East.
Radio New Zealand and Television New Zealand, our state broadcasters, are the worst offenders.
For example here are two BBC stories carried by RNZ this past week here and here. They cover the deaths of three Jewish women in a terrorist attack in the occupied West Bank.
The media should report such killings but there is no context given for the illegal Jewish-only settlements at the heart in the occupied West Bank, Israel’s military occupation across all Palestine, the daily ritual humiliation and debasement of Palestinians or its racist apartheid policies towards Palestinians — or as Israeli human rights groups B’Tselem describes it “A regime of Jewish supremacy from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea: This is apartheid”.
Neither are there Palestinian voices in the above reports — they are typically absent from most Middle East reporting, or at best muted, compared to extensive quoting from racist Israeli leaders.
The BBC is happy to report the “what?” but not the “why?”
Needless to say neither Radio New Zealand, nor TVNZ, has provided any such sympathetic coverage for the many dozens of Palestinians killed by Israel this year — including at least 16 Palestinian children. To the BBC, RNZ and TVNZ, murdered Palestinian children are simply statistics.
RNZ and TVNZ say they cannot ensure to cover all the complexities of the Middle East in every story and that people get a balanced view over time from their regular reporting.
This is not true. Their reliance on so much systematically-biased BBC reporting, and other sources which are often not much better, tells a different story.
For example, references to Israel as an apartheid state — something attested to by every credible human rights groups, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch — are always absent from any RNZ or TVNZ reporting and yet this is critical to help people understand what is going on in Palestine.
Neither are there significant references to international law or United Nations resolutions — the tools which provide for a Middle East peace based on justice — the only peace possible.
Unlike their reporting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, RNZ and TVNZ reporting on the Middle East leaves people confused and ready to blame both sides equally for the murder and mayhem unleashed by Israel on Palestinians and Palestinian resistance to the Israeli military occupation and all that entails.
John Minto is a political activist and commentator, and spokesperson for Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. This article is republished from the PSNA newsletter with the author’s permission.
“Divide and Dominate” . . . how Israel’s apartheid policies and repression impact on Palestinians. Image: Visualising Palestine
When Tahlea Aualiitia talks about hosting the ABC’s new Pacific-focused news and current affairs TV programme, The Pacific, her voice breaks and she becomes emotional.
Personally, it’s a career milestone, anchoring her first TV show after a decade working mostly in radio, producing ABC local radio programmes and presenting Pacific Mornings on ABC Radio Australia. But it’s also much more than that.
Aualiitia grew up in Tasmania and is of Samoan (and Italian) heritage. She has strong connections to the country and the Pacific Islander community in Australia.
ABC’s Tahlea Aualiitia . . . presenter of the new The Pacific programme. Image: Natasha Johnson/ABC News
What moves her so profoundly about The Pacific is that the 30-minute, weekly programme is being broadcast across the Pacific on ABC Australia, the ABC’s international TV channel, as well as in Australia (on the ABC News Channel and iview), and is produced by a team with a deep understanding of the region and features stories filed by local journalists based in Pacific nations.
“For me, it’s representation and I think that is really important,” she says.
“I’m probably going to cry because for so long I feel that in Australia and on mainstream TV, Pacific Islanders have been, at best, under-represented and, at worst, misrepresented.
“Given the geopolitical interest, there is more focus on the Pacific but my hope for this show is that it will highlight Pacific voices, really centre those voices as the people telling their stories and change the narrative.
‘The ABC cares’
“It shows the ABC cares, we are not just saying we decide what you watch, we’re involving you in what we’re doing, and I think that that makes a difference.”
The Pacific presenter Tahlea Aualiitia is of Samoan heritage and has worked at the ABC for more than a decade . . . “For me, it’s representation and I think that is really important.” Image: Natasha Johnson/ABC News
Aualiitia’s father was born in Samoa and moved to New Zealand at the age of 12, then later to Australia. Her mother’s brother married a Samoan woman, so Samoan culture was celebrated in her immediate and extended family.
She recalls a childhood shaped by Samoan food, dance and song, and the importance of family, faith and rugby. But from her experience, “the narrative” about the Pacific in Australia has tended towards being negative or patronising.
“I think people tend to see the Pacific as a monolith and there are a lot of stereotypes about what a Pacific Islander is, especially in view of the climate change crisis — there’s this idea everyone’s a victim and they should all just move to Australia,” she says.
“There’s a lot of stuff you carry as a brown journalist. When I hear a story on the news about a Pacific Islander and a crime, I brace myself and think about what that might mean for my day, is it going to make my day harder when I walk out onto the street, will it make my day at work harder?
“I’ve had people say to me when they learn I have an arts degree, ‘oh, your parents must be so proud of you because you’re the first person in your family who has gone to uni’. And that’s not true, my dad has a PhD in chemistry.
“It’s indicative of ideas that people have of what you’re capable of, what you can do, and that’s the power of the media to shape those narratives and change those narratives.
Facebook ‘reality’ check
“When I started presenting Pacific Mornings, I would interview people from across the Pacific and people would find me on Facebook, message me, saying, ‘I didn’t know any Pacific Islanders were working at the ABC’.
“I was just doing my job, but they said they were proud of me, of the visibility and that it was a good thing that it was happening. So, I hope this programme re-frames things a little bit by showing the rich diversity of the Pacific, its different cultures, resilience, and the joy of being Pacific.”
The Pacific is a weekly, news and current affairs programme about everything from regional politics to sport. Image: Natasha Johnson/ABC News
The Pacific is being produced by the ABC’s Asia Pacific Newsroom (APN), based in Melbourne, with funding from ABC International Broadcast and Digital Services.
While the scope of the ABC’s international services has fluctuated over the years, depending on federal government funding levels, an injection of $32 million over four years to ABC International Services allocated in the 2022 budget has enabled this first-of-its-kind programme to be made, among a suite of other initiatives under the Indo-Pacific Broadcast strategy.
“The APN has been a trusted content partner for the ABC’s International Services team for many years and already has deep Pacific expertise,” says Claire Gorman, head of international services.
“We have been working with the APN to produce our flagship programmes Pacific Beat and Wantok for ABC Radio Australia and have been wanting to produce a TV news programme for Pacific audiences for some time, but until now have not have the funding for it.
“The Pacific is the first of many exciting developments in the pipeline. We believe it is more important than ever before for Australians and Pacific audiences to have access to independent, trusted information about our region.”
Journalist Johnson Raela at rehearsals. Image: Natasha Johnson/ABC News
Pacific-wide team
Joining Aualiitia on air is long-serving Pacific Beat reporter and executive producer Evan Wasuka and journalist Johnson Raela, who previously worked in New Zealand and the Cook Islands.
Correspondent Lice Movono, based in Suva, Fiji, and Chrisnrita Aumanu-Leong in Honiara, Solomon Islands, are contributing to the programme as part of a developing “Local Journalism Network”, also funded under the Indo-Pacific Broadcast strategy, to use the expertise of independent journalists located in the region.
Lice Movono has worked as a journalist in FIji for 16 years and is now filing stories for The Pacific. Image: ABC New
Behind the scenes are APN supervising producer Sean Mantesso, producers Gabriella Marchant, Dinah Lewis Boucher, Nick Sas and APN managing editor Matt O’Sullivan.
“The ABC has covered the Pacific for decades but largely for the Pacific audience,” says O’Sullivan.
“In recent years, that’s mostly been via Pacific Beat and increasingly through digital and video storytelling. We’ve felt for some time that there’s growing interest in the Pacific within Australia and there’s also a massive Pacific diaspora in Australia with strong links to the region.
“So, we’ve felt a need to share our content more broadly. The Pacific programme will cover the breadth of Pacific life beyond palm trees and tourism, from politics to jobs and the economy, climate change, culture and sport.”
Supervising producer Sean Mantesso and Johnson Raela discussing plans for the programme. Image: Natasha Johnson/ABC News
Lice Movono has been working as a journalist in Fiji for 16 years and has previously filed for the ABC. She believes elevating the work of regional journalists across the ABC programs and platforms, through the Local Journalism initiative, will help provide more informed coverage of Pacific affairs.
“I believe it’s critical for journalists from within the Pacific to be at the centre of storytelling about the Pacific,” she says.
“A few years ago, while working in a local media organisation, I had the opportunity to attend a conference in Europe and it shocked and saddened me to find that there are people on the other side of the world who have little or no understanding of what it means to live with the reality of climate change here in the region.
“So, it means everything for me to work with the ABC, which has one of the widest, if not the widest reach in the Pacific region and to have access to a platform that tells stories about the Pacific and Fiji, in particular, to the rest of the world, to tell authentic stories through the lens of a Pacific Islander, and an Indigenous one at that, about the realities of what Pacific people face.”
While the covid pandemic and various lockdowns curbed a lot of international news gathering, it provided an opportunity to showcase the work of locally based reporters on ABC domestic channels.
“We’ve often used stringers in the region, but covid showed us the value journalists in country can offer,” says O’Sullivan.
“Because we couldn’t fly Australian-based crews into the region during the pandemic, we relied more on journalists in the Pacific telling their stories, for example during the 2021 riots in Solomon Islands.
“We are now building on that foundation of local expertise and knowledge by establishing the Local Journalism Network of independent journalists to report for the ABC.
“We’ve had producers doing training with them, teaching them how to shoot good TV pictures and we’ve provided mobile journalism kits that enable them to quickly do a TV cross.
“In filing for the ABC, they can tell stories local media often can’t but the challenge for us is protecting them.”
Support and protection from the ABC has been welcomed by Movono. Renowned for her tough questioning, she has endured personal threats and harassment over the course of her career, but the country is now moving into a new era of openness with the newly-elected Rabuka government repealing the controversial Media Industry Development Act that was introduced under military law in 2010 and has been regarded as a restraint on media freedom.
In an international scoop, Movono landed an interview with the new Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, for the first episode of The Pacific.
Lice Movono secured an exclusive interview with the new Prime Minister of Fiji, Sitiveni Rabuka, for the first episode of The Pacific. Image: ABC News
“When I knew that there was going to be a segment of The Pacific where we could Talanoa with leaders of the Pacific, it was important for me to position the ABC as the one international organisation that Rabuka would do an interview with,” she says.
“I knew, with the new government only weeks into power, it was going to be a challenge. The government is dealing with a failing economy, a divided country, high inflation, high levels of poverty, the ongoing recovery from covid and trying to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
“But he has made progress as a Pacific leader, as the leader of a country just coming out of a military dictatorship, and he’s done some significant work in the region. So, it was a very significant interview, probably one of the most important assignments of my career.”
In addition to new content and engagement of local journalists, ABC International Services is also expanding the FM footprint for ABC Radio Australia and enhancing media training across the region.
As she prepared for the first episode of The Pacific to go to air, Tahlea Aualiitia was keen to hear the feedback from the audience and — with some trepidation– from family and friends in Samoa.
“I think that’s the part that I’m most nervous about,” she says.
“I know that they will lovingly make fun of my struggling to pronounce Samoan words properly, given I grew up in Australia, but I know they’re already proud of me because of the work I’m doing here.
“Having said that, my brother is a doctor, so I don’t think I’ll ever reach that level of family pride but I’m getting closer!”
Flashback to a cover story in African Development magazine in April 1974. The Trans-African Highway (TAH) was expected to ease trade and other contacts between East and West Africa when completed in 1976. But the amount of work to be done on the road in the different countries through which it passed varied greatly, as David Robie found when he travelled in his Kombi across more than 6400 kilometres from Mombasa (Kenya) to Lagos (Nigeria). This was part of Robie’s epic African odyssey in the blue Kombi named “Tūhoe” in honour of the Te Urewera people from Cape Town to Algiers and then on to Paris via Ceuta, Morocco.
By David Robie
Africa’s prestige road, the Trans African Highway (TAH) from the Kenyan port of Mombasa on the shores of the Indian Ocean to the hectic Nigerian capital Lagos on the Atlantic, is taking shape mile by mile.
The 4000 mile (6438 km) route through Kenya, Uganda, Zaire, Central African Republic, Cameroon and Nigeria will be completed within four years, according to experts at the highway’s coordinating conference in Mombasa last year.
Dr Robert Gardiner, executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, is even more optimistic. “With determination and readiness,” he says, “the first inaugural trip to Lagos will be made in 1976.”
The projected route for the Trans-African Highway between Mombasa (Kenya) to Lagos (Nigeria) in 1972. Map: Gemini News Agency/With David Robie’s article.
The projected route, starting in Kenya, climbs from Mombasa to Nairobi, follows the highlands to Eldoret and drops away to the Ugandan border. Through Uganda it crosses the Victoria Nile to Kampala and then skirts the Ruwenzori — the fabled Mountains of the Moon.
Yaoundé bypassed
In Zaire, the route penetrates almost 1000 miles of tropical jungle, including the wild Ituri forest, home of the pygmy tribes. It meets the Zaire river (former Congo) at Kisangani, the dreary capital of Upper Zaire province. From Bangassou, the route crosses rolling countryside of the Central African Republic to chic Bangui and on to the Cameroon border.
Across Cameroon it is ill-defined. The major port of Douala and the capital Yaoundé are being bypassed in favour of a route further north through Tibati, crossing several old Fon kingdoms and straddling the Cameroon highlands. From the Nigerian border it carries on through scrubland to Enugu, Onitsha, across the mighty Niger river, and into the forest again to Benin City and Lagos.
Kenya and Uganda’s share of the roads are mainly asphalt and little needs to be done. Nigeroa’s roads are mainly asphalt, too, but many of them were badly damaged during the three-year Nigerian civil war (6 July 1967 – 15 January 1970) fought with the secessionist republic of Biafra. Most of the rest of the route — particularly through Zaire — is in a bad way.
The article header on David Robie’s African Development article about the Trans-African Highway, 1974.
At independence in 1960, Zaire had a comprehensive system of roads in the north-east region. However, the roads have been severely neglected in the last decade and some are now the worst on the whole Trans-African route.
For nine month of the year heavy rain turns roads in the Zaire basin into treacherous slush. For the other three months the tracks dry out a little but many sections remain difficult, if not impassable, for vehciles without four-wheel drive (even Land-Rovers often find them too much).
I crossed Zaire during December, one of the “drier” months. There was no rain in 15 days of driving , but the worst leg of the highway — between the tiny village of Tele and the derelict town of Buta — was 50 miles (80 km) of 3ft (1m) deep mudholes and scoured out ridges.
It took almost three days to battle my way through the worst part — nine hours to go merely one mile (1.6 km). I picked up a soldier and a labourer (they were seeking a lift to their village) for extra pushing power. They were invaluable for recruiting whole groups of villagers to help out in trouble spots — for negotiated fees of 10 makuta a head (about 9p), bars of soap, bags of sugar, old sandals or shorts, or something similar.
But even with 20 men pushing and preparatory swork with tree trunks cut from the forest and a high-lift jack it took three hours of solid work getting through the worst holes.
The road is considered a “hell run” by Zairean drivers. It is only 200 miles (322 km) from Kisangani to Buta, but they prefer to drive 840 miles (1352 km) through Isiro than to tackle the Tele road.
Yet trucks continually get bogged elsewhere. Midway between Mambasa and Nia-Nia I encountered a truck which had been trapped in a 4ft (1.2m) deep mudhole for 14 hours. Rescuers struggled to free it, but on each attempt it was sucked deeper into the putrid mire so that the tray was level with the track.
A road gang eventually arrived, towed out the truck and filled in the giant hole — but not before 30 trucks had piled up waiting to get through. Image: David Robie/African Development/Trans African scrapbook
On one side 12 trucks were held up waiting to get through and on the other side there were eight. There was no way around because the jungle grew right to the edge of the road.
A road gang eventually arrived, towed out the truck and filled in the giant hole — but not before 30 trucks had piled up waiting to get through.
The drivers take these episodes in their stride. An everyday hazard of Zairean roads.
Bridges in Zaire are also neglected. When planks rot , they are often not replaced and many bridges have gaping holes; north of Kisangani there are makeshift bridges of split logs.
Four river ferries ply the route north of Kisangani, too. Across the Aruwimi River at Nanalia there is a modern 30-tonner, at Bondo there is a 20-tonner, and one near Monga is poled across the river.
The ferry across the Ubangi River from Ndu to Bangassou is operated by a 24-volt electrical system — but the batteries have been stolen (three years ago). Travellers or truck drivers must provide their own batteries or hire a pirogue (dugout boat) to borrow batteries from the mission at Bangassou.
Zairean government ferries are free, but many crews, especially on the Ubangi, take advantage of their isolation to coerce fat tips from passengers.
Huge trees sometimes tumble across roads and travellers have to force a trail through the forest until a path has been cut through the trunk.
Conditions are generally far better in the other highway countries. The Central African Republic has mainly good roads with a few eroded patches and sand drifts in border areas.
Cameroon’s roads in the Tibati region are extremely bad, but better than in Zaire. Kenya and Uganda have first-class roads.
Nigeria has a mixed bag — excellent roads in some places and badly chopped up roads elsewhere.
A 2021 TAH news item on the New Africa Channel.
£200m — £300 being spent
Finance for development of the highway is being provided mainly by grants and sft loans from Belgium, France, Italy, Japan, United States, West Germany, the African Development Bank and the World Bank. Conflicting estimates on total spending vary between 200 million and 300 million pounds sterling.
About 50 percent of the road studies have been completed, 40 percent are assured of financial backing and only 10 percent remain outstanding.
Highway specifications call for 24ft-wide (7.4m) roads with 9ft (2.7m) shoulders capable of supporting vehicles driving at 60 mph (97 kph). Maximum loadings are not yet determined. French-speaking countries support 13 tonnes and the English-speaking nations prefer 10 tons.
Zaire has embarked on a £50 million programme (including an £8 million IDA loan) to develop 1300 miles (2010km) of roads in its north-eastern region. Most of this money will be spent on the Trans African Highway yet the Offices des Routes gives some priority to regional roads such as a new one being prepared from Kisangani through Walikale to Goma on Lake Kivu.
The Belgian-Zaire company Sonozatra has begun improving most of the rioad from Beni to Kisangani. It has already upgraded 205 miles (330 km) from Nia-Nia to Kisangani. Dumez-Zaire, a French company, is working on the on the Kisangani to Buta sector and a yet to be named Japanese comoany will this year begin work from there to the border.
Cameroon also has wide-ranging plans for developing the highway. In a bold move, the Transport and Planning Ministries preferred to ignore the existing reasonable road through Yaoundé and Douala. Instead, it has chosen to construct a road through Tibati to open up bauxite-rich areas near the railhead town Ngaoundere and to develop areas around the Adamaoua foothills which have a high potential for cattle ranching, and rice and maize cultivation.
West German consultants DIWI are studying the possibility of routing the road through the Mbam valley to Magba. The Italian company SIPAC has started work on Meidouga to Tibati. Garoua-Boulai to Meidouga will be left for the moment because highway funds have been diverted to buold a good road from Tibati to Ngaoundere.
The Highways Department is at present constructing a new road from Mamfe to Bamenda and tenders will soon be called for the Bafousem to Foumban road.
About £40 million is being allocated (mainly through USAID, West German and Italian loans) for these projects.
In the Central African Republic, funds are short but 70 miles (113 km) of asphalt is expected to be laid between Damara and Sibut and the French company BCEOM is upgrading 200 miles (322 km) from Bossemtele to Garoua-Boulai.
Uganda will lay asphalt on the last earth road remaining on its share of the route — about 100 miles (161 km) between Kampala and Fort Portal. Kenya generally has good tarmac roads up to the highway specifications.
Nigeria is spending up to £80 million in an impressive programme, including the Lagos to Shagamu leg of a planned freeway to Ibadan. Monier is rebuilding war-damaged bridges and Dumez-Nigeria will construct others between Shagamu and Benin City.
The cover of the Trans African Highway edition of African Development magazine, April 1974.
Dumez-Nigeria has just completed the $4.5 million Benin to Onitsha road and repairs to the Niger bridge will be completed this year. Tenders will soon be called for the shell-pocked Onitsha to Enugu and Enugu to Bamilike roads. A feasibility study is being carried out on the Bamileke to Ekok earth road which becomes impassable during the rains.
Connecting the giant highway will be the two proposed Trans West African Highways and feeder roads in the east from the Somali capital Mogadishu to Nairobi (800 miles — 1290 km), the Zambian capital Lusaka to Nairobi (1500 miles — 2415 km), the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to Nairobi (1000 miles — 1600 km), the Sudanese capital of Khartoum to Kampala (1350 miles — 2173 km), and Bujumbura in Burundi to Kasindi in Uganda (500 miles — 800 km).
More than 4000 miles (6438 km) of similar roads will link the main urban centres of Chad, Congo, Gabon and Niger with the highway.
Some of these roads, such as from Lusaka to Nairobi, already have lengthy asphalt stretches up to standard. Work on others, such as Mogadishu to Nairobi, will largely be started from scratch. And when the roads are completed there is the difficulty of maintenance. Many of the highway countries are budgeting adequately for road construction but there the money ends.
“The trouble is that many African countries don’t understand the importance of maintenance,” said one engineer in Yaoundé. “They think that once you’ve built a good road, it will look after itself.”
Map of Trans-African Highways 2022. Source: Wikimedia/Michelin Afrique/Google Earth
Common customs, immigration procedures
Perhaps a greater problem than the roads themselves will be persuading the six countries to agree on common customs and immigration procedures, extension of in-bond facilities for transit goods between ports and landlocked nations, vehicle insurance, road regulations, and perking up border efficiency.
When I was leaving Zaire, a couple who had broken down and overstayed their eight-day transit visa had a torrid time with the immigration official. He insisted they must return more than 500 miles (800 km) across bad roads to Kisangani to straighten out the issue.
At last he relented — for a bribe of US$4 and tucked the greenbacks inside the flyleaf of a Bible.
Nigerian customs officials refused me entry at first because my Kenyan-issued international driver’s permit did not include Nigeria in the list of countries on the cover. And then they refused to accept that there was such an vehicle engine number as the one listed in my West Ger man-issued carnet de passage. It took almost three hours before the officials finally let me cross the border.
In Uganda, soldiers rifled through my gear looking fir “guns” while I was leaving the country and troops in Zaire commandeered my van at gunpoint for a joyride (to a nearby village). But these episodes are nothing compared with what many truck drivers experience.
In spite of fuel shortages in many parts of Africa there are serious difficulties only in Zaire on the highway route. When I travelled through it was only possible to buy petrol in three towns — Beni, Kisangani and Bondo – in almost 1000 miles (1600 km).
And it is difficult changing money in Zaire. Bondo,like many towns, had no banking facilities whatsoever, forcing people to resort to currency black markets merely to buy petrol.
Premium grade petrol prices vary from 27p a gallon in oil-rich Nigeria (pegged throughout the country) to nearly 70p in Bangassou, Central African Republic.
Four of the highway ciuntries drive on the right. Only Kenya and Uganda will have to be persuaded to follow suit. London consultants T P O’Sullivan and Partners and the Paris-based Bureau Central d’Etudes pour les Equipments have been commissioned by the Economic Commission for Africa to investigate this sort of problem and make recommendations on hos the six countries can adopt compatable systems. They are expected to present a preliminary report to the highway coordinating committee’s conference from April 3 to 7, 1974.
“When the concept of the highway was raised,” said Kenya’s Vice-President Daniel Arap Moi last year, “many of our friends laughed at us and thought this was one of those white elephants.”
It still has a long way to go but the Trans African Highway will certainly be no white elephant. It will give trade and contact between East and West Africa a tremendous shot in the arm.
This article was originally published by African Development magazine in April, 1974 (pp. 11-13).
The Trans African Highway in 1973 . . . difficult and incomplete but no white elephant. Image: David Robie montage FB
NZ pilot Philip Mehrtens held hostage by West Papuan rebels . . . search for his location now covers 36,000 sq km. Image: RNZ Pacific/FB
RNZ Pacific
The authorities in Indonesia’s Papua region say the search for a New Zealand pilot taken hostage by West Papua Liberation Movement freedom fighters more than two months ago has been extended.
Commissioner Rahmadani said several efforts have been carried out to rescue the pilot, including involving a negotiating team comprising community leaders, the publication reported.
However, the negotiation has not yielded any results.
The search now covers about 36,000 sq km.
Commissioner Rahmadani said the safety of Captain Merthens was the priority for his team.
In the video, which was sent to RNZ Pacific, Mehrtens was instructed to read a statement saying “no foreign pilots are to work and fly” into Highlands Papua until Papua was independent.
He made another demand for West Papua independence from Indonesia later in the statement.
Mehrtens was surrounded by more than a dozen people, some of them armed with weapons.
Previously, a TPNPB spokesperson said they were waiting for a response from the New Zealand government to negotiate the release of Mehrtens.
In February, United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) leader Benny Wenda called for the rebels to release Mehrtens.
He said he sympathised with the New Zealand people and Merhtens’ family but insisted the situation was a result of Indonesia’s refusal to allow the UN Human Rights Commissioner to visit Papua.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
The West Papua Liberation Army says they would drop the key demand that Jakarta recognise the independence of the Papua region #WestPapua#nzpolhttps://t.co/I2Vd13w66G
An anti-government protester in Wellington marching towards Parliament in August 2022 . . . a lack of tools in New Zealand to deal with disinformation and conspiratorialism. Image: Samuel Rillstone/RNZ News
By Russell Palmer
Unprecedented levels of disinformation will only get worse this election in Aotearoa New Zealand, but systems set up to deal with it during the pandemic have all been shut down, Disinformation Project researcher Dr Sanjana Hattotuwa has warned.
He says the levels of vitriol and conspiratorial discourse this past week or two are worse than anything he has seen during the past two years of the pandemic — including during the Parliament protest — but he is not aware of any public work to counteract it.
“There is no policy, there’s no framework, there’s no real regulatory mechanism, there’s no best practice, and there’s no legal oversight,” Dr Hattotuwa told RNZ News.
He says urgent action should be taken, and could include legislation, community-based initiatives, or a stronger focus on the recommendations of the 15 March 2019 mosque attacks inquiry.
Highest levels of disinformation, conspiratorialism seen yet Dr Hattotuwa said details of the project’s analysis of violence and content from the past week — centred on the visit by British activist Posie Parker — were so confronting he could not share it.
“I don’t want to alarm listeners, but I think that the Disinformation Project — with evidence and in a sober reflection and analysis of what we are looking at — the honest assessment is not something that I can quite share, because the BSA (Broadcasting Standards Authority) guidelines won’t allow it.
Dr Sanjana Hattotuwa, research fellow from The Disinformation Project . . . “I don’t want to alarm listeners, but . . . the honest assessment is not something that I can quite share.” Image: RNZ News
“The fear is very much … particularly speaking as a Sri Lankan who has come from and studied for doctoral research offline consequences of online harm, that I’m seeing now in Aotearoa New Zealand what I studied and I thought I had left behind back in Sri Lanka.”
The new levels of vitriol were unlike anything seen since the project’s daily study began in 2021, and included a rise in targeting of politicians specifically by far-right and neo-Nazi groups, he said.
But — as the SIS noted in its latest report this week — the lines were becoming increasingly blurred between those more ideologically motivated groups, and the newer ones using disinformation and targeting authorities and government.
“You know, distinction without a difference,” he said. “The Disinformation Project is not in the business of looking at the far right and neo-Nazis — that’s a specialised domain that we don’t consider ourselves to be experts in — what we do is to look at disinformation.
“Now to find that you have neo-Nazis, the far-right, anti-semitic signatures — content, presentations and engagement — that colours that discourse is profoundly worrying because you would want to have a really clear distinction.
No Telegram ‘guardrail’
“There is no guardrail on Telegram against any of this, it’s one click away. And so there’s a whole range of worries and concerns we have … because we can’t easily delineate anymore between what would have earlier been very easy categorisation.”
Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said she had been subjected to increasing levels of abuse in recent weeks with a particular far-right flavour.
“The online stuff is particularly worrying but no matter who it’s directed towards we’ve got to remember that can also branch out into actual violence if we don’t keep a handle on it,” she said.
“Strong community connection in real life is what holds off the far-right extremism that we’ve seen around the world … we also want the election to be run where every politician takes responsibility for a humane election dialogue that focuses on the issues, that doesn’t drum up extra hate towards any other politician or any other candidate.”
Green Party co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson . . . Image: Samuel Rillstone/RNZ News
Limited protection as election nears Dr Hattotuwa said it was particularly worrying considering the lack of tools in New Zealand to deal with disinformation and conspiratorialism.
“Every institutional mechanism and framework that was established during the pandemic to deal with disinformation has now been dissolved. There is nothing that I know in the public domain of what the government is doing with regards to disinformation,” Dr Hattotuwa said.
“The government is on the backfoot in an election year — I can understand in terms of realpolitik, but there is no investment.”
He believed the problem would only get worse as the election neared.
“The anger, the antagonism is driven by a distrust in government that is going to be instrumentalised to ever greater degrees in the future, around public consultative processing, referenda and electoral moments.
“The worry and the fear is, as has been noted by the Green Party, that the election campaigning is not going to be like anything that the country has ever experienced … that there will be offline consequences because of the online instigation and incitement.
“It’s really going to give pause to, I hope, the way that parties consider their campaign. Because the worry is — in a high trust society in New Zealand — you kind of have the expectation that you can go out and meet the constituency … I know that many others are thinking that this is now not something that you can take for granted.”
Possible countermeasures
Dr Hattotuwa said countermeasures could include legislation, security-sector reform, community-based action, or a stronger focus on implementing the recommendations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCOI) into the terrorist attack on Christchurch mosques.
“There are a lot of recommendations in the RCOI that, you know, are being just cosmetically dealt with. And there are a lot of things that are not even on the government’s radar. So there’s a whole spectrum of issues there that I think really call for meaningful conversations and investment where it’s needed.”
National’s campaign chair Chris Bishop said the party did not have any specific campaign preparations under way in relation to disinformation, but would be willing to work with the government on measures to counteract it.
“If the goverment thinks we should be taking them then we’d be happy to sit down and have a conversation about it,” he said.
“Obviously we condemn violent rhetoric and very sadly MPs and candidates in the past few years have been subject to more of that including threats made to their physical wellbeing and we condemn that and we want to try to avoid that as much as possible.”
Labour’s campaign chair Megan Woods did not respond to requests for comment.
Ardern’s rhetoric not translating to policy Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke during her valedictory farewell speech in Parliament on Wednesday about the loss of the ability to “engage in good robust debates and land on our respective positions relatively respectfully”.
“While there were a myriad of reasons, one was because so much of the information swirling around was false. I could physically see how entrenched it was for some people.”
Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gives her valedictory speech. Image: Phil Smith/RNZ News
Ardern is set to take up an unpaid role at the Christchurch Call, which was set up after the terror attacks and has a focus on targeting online proliferation of dis- and mis-information and the spread of hateful rhetoric.
Dr Hattotuwa said Ardern had led the world in her own rhetoric around the problem, but real action now needed to be taken.
“Let me be very clear, PM Ardern was a global leader in articulating the harm that disinformation has on democracy — at NATO, at Harvard, and then at the UN last year. There has been no translation into policy around that which she articulated publicly, so I think that needs to occur.
“I mean, when people say that they’re going to go and vent their frustration it might mean with a placard, it might mean with a gun.”
Unprecedented levels of disinformation will only get worse this election, but systems set up to deal with it during the pandemic have all been shut down, Disinformation Project researcher Sanjana Hattotuwa has warned.https://t.co/LUVAbALjGD
Israeli police attack worshippers inside Al-Aqsa Mosque. Image: Screenshot of Al Jazeera video: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/5/israeli-police-attack-worshippers-in-jerusalems-al-aqsa-mosque
ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook
The late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a Nobel laureate and tireless campaigner against South African apartheid, once observed: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
For decades, the BBC’s editorial policy in reporting on Israel and Palestine has consistently chosen the side of the oppressor — and all too often, not even by adopting the impartiality the corporation claims as the bedrock of its journalism.
Instead, the British state broadcaster regularly chooses language and terminology whose effect is to deceive its audience. And it compounds such journalistic malpractice by omitting vital pieces of context when that extra information would present Israel in a bad light.
BBC bias — which entails knee-jerk echoing of the British establishment’s support for Israel as a highly militarised ally projecting Western interests into the oil-rich Middle East – was starkly on show once again this week as the broadcaster reported on the violence at Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Social media was full of videos showing heavily armed Israeli police storming the mosque complex during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
Police could be seen pushing peaceful Muslim worshippers, including elderly men, off their prayer mats and forcing them to leave the site. In other scenes, police were filmed beating worshippers inside a darkened Al-Aqsa, while women could be heard screaming in protest.
What is wrong with the British state broadcaster’s approach — and much of the rest of the Western media’s — is distilled in one short BBC headline: “Clashes erupt at contested holy site.”
Into a sentence of just six words, the BBC manages to cram three bogusly “neutral” words, whose function is not to illuminate or even to report, but to trick the audience, as Tutu warned, into siding with the oppressor.
Furious backlash Though video of the beatings was later included on the BBC’s website and the headline changed after a furious online backlash, none of the sense of unprovoked, brutal Israeli state violence, or its malevolent rationale, was captured by the BBC’s reporting.
To call al-Aqsa a ‘contested holy site’, as the BBC does, is simply to repeat a propaganda talking point from Israel, the oppressor state, and dress it up as neutral reporting
The “clashes” at al-Aqsa, in the BBC’s telling, presume a violent encounter between two groups: Palestinians, described by Israel and echoed by the BBC as “agitators”, on one side; and Israeli forces of law and order on the other.
That is the context, according to the BBC, for why unarmed Palestinians at worship need to be beaten. And that message is reinforced by the broadcaster’s description of the seizure of hundreds of Palestinians at worship as “arrests” — as though an unwelcome, occupying, belligerent security force present on another people’s land is neutrally and equitably upholding the law.
“Erupt” continues the theme. It suggests the “clashes” are a natural force, like an earthquake or volcano, over which Israeli police presumably have little, if any, control. They must simply deal with the eruption to bring it to an end.
And the reference to the “contested” holy site of Al-Aqsa provides a spurious context legitimising Israeli state violence: police need to be at Al-Aqsa because their job is to restore calm by keeping the two sides “contesting” the site from harming each other or damaging the holy site itself.
The BBC buttresses this idea by uncritically citing an Israeli police statement accusing Palestinians of being at Al-Aqsa to “disrupt public order and desecrate the mosque”.
Palestinians are thus accused of desecrating their own holy site simply by worshipping there — rather than the desecration committed by Israeli police in storming al-Aqsa and violently disrupting worship.
The History of Al-Aqsa Mosque. Video: Middle East Eye
Israeli provocateurs The BBC’s framing should be obviously preposterous to any rookie journalist in Jerusalem. It assumes that Israeli police are arbiters or mediators at Al-Aqsa, dispassionately enforcing law and order at a Muslim place of worship, rather than the truth: that for decades, the job of Israeli police has been to act as provocateurs, dispatched by a self-declared Jewish state, to undermine the long-established status quo of Muslim control over Al-Aqsa.
Events were repeated for a second night this week when police again raided Al-Aqsa, firing rubber bullets and tear gas as thousands of Palestinians were at prayer. US statements calling for “calm” and “de-escalation” adopted the same bogus evenhandedness as the BBC.
The mosque site is not “contested”, except in the imagination of Jewish religious extremists, some of them in the Israeli government, and the most craven kind of journalists.
True, there are believed to be the remains of two long-destroyed Jewish temples somewhere underneath the raised mount where al-Aqsa is built. According to Jewish religious tradition, the Western Wall — credited with being a retaining wall for one of the disappeared temples – is a place of worship for Jews.
But under that same Jewish rabbinical tradition, the plaza where Al-Aqsa is sited is strictly off-limits to Jews. The idea of Al-Aqsa complex as being “contested” is purely an invention of the Israeli state — now backed by a few extremist settler rabbis — that exploits this supposed “dispute” as the pretext to assert Jewish sovereignty over a critically important piece of occupied Palestinian territory.
Israel’s goal — not Judaism’s — is to strip Palestinians of their most cherished national symbol, the foundation of their religious and emotional attachment to the land of their ancestors, and transfer that symbol to a state claiming to exclusively represent the Jewish people.
To call Al-Aqsa a “contested holy site”, as the BBC does, is simply to repeat a propaganda talking point from Israel, the oppressor state, and dress it up as neutral reporting.
‘Equal rights’ at Al-Aqsa The reality is that there would have been no “clashes”, no “eruption” and no “contest” had Israeli police not chosen to storm Al-Aqsa while Palestinians were worshipping there during the holiest time of the year.
This is not a ‘clash’. It is not a ‘conflict’. Those supposedly ‘neutral’ terms conceal what is really happening: apartheid and ethnic cleansing
There would have been no “clashes” were Israeli police not aggressively enforcing a permanent occupation of Palestinian land in Jerusalem, which has encroached ever more firmly on Muslim access to, and control over, the mosque complex.
There would have been no “clashes” were Israeli police not taking orders from the latest – and most extreme – of a series of police ministers, Itamar Ben Gvir, who does not even bother to hide his view that Al-Aqsa must be under absolute Jewish sovereignty.
There would have been no “clashes” had Israeli police not been actively assisting Jewish religious settlers and bigots to create facts on the ground over many years — facts to bolster an evolving Israeli political agenda that seeks “equal rights” at Al-Aqsa for Jewish extremists, modelled on a similar takeover by settlers of the historic Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.
And there would have been no “clashes” if Palestinians were not fully aware that, over many years, a tiny, fringe Jewish settler movement plotting to blow up Al-Aqsa Mosque to build a Third Temple in its place has steadily grown, flourishing under the sponsorship of Israeli politicians and ever more sympathetic Israeli media coverage.
Cover story for violence Along with the Israeli army, the paramilitary Israeli police are the main vehicle for the violent subjugation of Palestinians, as the Israeli state and its settler emissaries dispossess Palestinians, driving them into ever smaller enclaves.
This is not a “clash”. It is not a “conflict”. Those supposedly “neutral” terms conceal what is really happening: apartheid andethnic cleansing.
Just as there is a consistent, discernible pattern to Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, there is a parallel, discernible pattern in the Western media’s misleading reporting on Israel and Palestine.
Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are being systematically dispossessed by Israel of their homes and farmlands so they can be herded into overcrowded, resource-starved cities.
Palestinians in Gaza have been dispossessed of their access to the outside world, and even to other Palestinians, by an Israeli siege that encages them in an overcrowded, resourced-starved coastal enclave.
And in the Old City of Jerusalem, Palestinians are being progressively dispossessed by Israel of access to, and control over, their central religious resource: Al-Aqsa Mosque. Their strongest source of religious and emotional attachment to Jerusalem is being actively stolen from them.
To describe as “clashes” any of these violent state processes — carefully calibrated by Israel so they can be rationalised to outsiders as a “security response” — is to commit the very journalistic sin Tutu warned of. In fact, it is not just to side with the oppressor, but to intensify the oppression; to help provide the cover story for it.
That point was made this week by Francesca Albanese, the UN expert on Israel’s occupation. She noted in a tweet about the BBC’s reporting of the Al-Aqsa violence: “Misleading media coverage contributes to enabling Israel’s unchecked occupation & must also be condemned/accounted for.”
Bad journalism There can be reasons for bad journalism. Reporters are human and make mistakes, and they can use language unthinkingly, especially when they are under pressure or events are unexpected.
It is an editorial choice that keeps the BBC skewing its reporting in the same direction: making Israel look like a judicious actor pursuing lawful, rational goals
But that is not the problem faced by those covering Israel and Palestine. Events can be fast-moving, but they are rarely new or unpredictable. The reporter’s task should be to explain and clarify the changing forms of the same, endlessly repeating central story: of Israel’s ongoing dispossession and oppression of Palestinians, and of Palestinian resistance.
The challenge is to make sense of Israel’s variations on a theme, whether it is dispossessing Palestinians through illegal settlement-building and expansion; army-backed settler attacks; building walls and cages for Palestinians; arbitrary arrests and night raids; the murder of Palestinians, including children and prominent figures; house demolitions; resource theft; humiliation; fostering a sense of hopelessness; or desecrating holy sites.
No one, least of all BBC reporters, should have been taken by surprise by this week’s events at Al-Aqsa.
The Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan, when Al-Aqsa is at the heart of Islamic observance for Palestinians, coincided this year with the Jewish Passover holiday, as it did last year.
Passover is when Jewish religious extremists hope to storm Al-Aqsa Mosque complex to make animal sacrifices, recreating some imagined golden age in Judaism. Those extremists tried again this year, as they do every year — except this year, they had a police minister in Ben Gvir, leader of the fascist Jewish Power party, who is privately sympathetic to their cause.
Violent settler and army attacks on Palestinian farmers in the occupied West Bank, especially during the autumn olive harvest, are a staple of news reporting from the region, as is the intermittent bombing of Gaza or snipers shooting Palestinians protesting their mass incarceration by Israel.
It is an endless series of repetitions that the BBC has had decades to make sense of and find better ways to report.
It is not journalistic error or failure that is the problem. It is an editorial choice that keeps the British state broadcaster skewing its reporting in the same direction: making Israel look like a judicious actor pursuing lawful, rational goals, while Palestinian resistance is presented as tantrum-like behaviour, driven by uncontrollable, unintelligible urges that reflect hostility towards Jews rather than towards an oppressor Israeli state.
Tail of a mouse Archbishop Tutu expanded on his point about siding with the oppressor. He added: “If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
This week, a conversation between Ben Gvir, the far-right, virulently anti-Arab police minister, and his police chief, Kobi Shabtai, was leaked to Israel’s Channel 12 News. Shabtai reportedly told Ben Gvir about his theory of the “Arab mind”, noting: “They murder each other. It’s in their nature. That’s the mentality of the Arabs.”
This conclusion — convenient for a police force that has abjectly failed to solve crimes within Palestinian communities — implies that the Arab mind is so deranged, so bloodthirsty, that brutal repression of the kind seen at Al-Aqsa is all police can do to keep a bare minimum of control.
Ben Gvir, meanwhile, believes a new “national guard” — a private militia he was recently promised by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — can help him to crush Palestinian resistance. Settler street thugs, his political allies, will finally be able to put on uniforms and have official licence for their anti-Arab violence.
This is the real context — the one that cannot be acknowledged by the BBC or other Western outlets — for the police storming of Al-Aqsa complex this week. It is the same context underpinning settlement expansion, night raids, checkpoints, the siege of Gaza, the murder of Palestinian journalists, and much, much more.
Jewish supremacism undergirds every Israeli state action towards Palestinians, tacitly approved by Western states and their media in the service of advancing Western colonialism in the oil-rich Middle East.
The BBC’s coverage this week, as in previous months and years, was not neutral, or even accurate. It was, as Tutu warned, a confidence trick — one meant to lull audiences into accepting Israeli violence as always justified, and Palestinian resistance as always abhorrent.
Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net. This article was first published at Middle East Eye and is republished with the permission of the author.
Reporter Rakesh Kumar (from left) and chief editor Fred Wesley from The Fiji Times, and editor Samantha Magick of Islands Business . . . "It wasn't an easy journey, but truly thankful for today." Image: Lydia Lewis/RNZ Pacific
By Lydia Lewis and Kelvin Anthony
The Fiji Parliament has voted to “kill” a draconian media law in Suva today, sending newsrooms across the country into celebrations.
Twenty nine parliamentarians voted to repeal the Media Industry Development Act, while 21 voted against it and 3 did not vote.
The law — which started as a post-coup decree in 2010 — has been labelled as a “noose around the neck of the media industry and journalists” since it was enacted into law.
While opposition FijiFirst parliamentarians voted against the bill, Fiji’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance Professor Biman Prasad said binning the act would be good for the people and for democracy.
Removing the controversial law was a major election promise by Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s coalition government.
Emotional day for newsrooms The news was “one for the ages for us”, Fiji Times editor-in-chief Fred Wesley, who was dragged into court on multiple occasions by the former government under the act, told RNZ Pacific in Vanuatu.
He said today was about all the Fijian media workers who stayed true to their profession.
“People who slugged it out, people who remained passionate about their work and continued disseminating information and getting people to make well-informed decision on a daily basis.”
“It wasn’t an easy journey, but truly thankful for today,” an emotional Wesley said.
“We’re in an era where we don’t have draconian legislation hanging over our heads.”
He said the entire industry was happy and newsrooms are now looking forward to the next chapter.
“The next phases is the challenge of putting together a Fiji media council to do the work of listening to complaints and all of that, and I’m overwhelmed and very grateful.”
Holding government to account He said people in Fiji should continue to expect the media to do what it was supposed to do: “Holding government to account, holding our leaders to account and making sure that they’re responsible in the decisions they make.”
Fiji Times editor-in-chief Fred Wesley and Islands Business editor Samantha Magick embrace each other after finding out the the Fijian Parliament has repealed the MIDA Act. Image: Lydia Lewis/RNZ Pacific
Journalists ‘can be brave’ Islands Business magazine editor Samantha Magick said getting rid of the law meant it would now create an environment for Fiji journalists to do more critical journalism.
“I think [we will] see less, ‘he said, she said’, reporting in very controlled environments,” Magick said.
“Fiji’s media will see more investigations, more depth, more voices, different perspectives, [and] hopefully they can engage a bit more as well without fear.
“It’ll just be so much healthier for us as a people and democracy to have that level of debate and investigation and questioning, regardless of who you are,” she added.
RNZ Pacific senior sports journalist and PINA board member Iliesa Tora said the Parliament’s decision sent a strong message to the rest of the region.
“The message [this sends] to the region and the different regional government’s is that you need to work with the media to ensure that there is media freedom,” said Tora, who chose to leave Fiji because he could not operate as a journalist due of the act.
“The freedom of the media ensures that people are also able to freely express themselves and are not fearful in coming forward to talk about things that they see that governments are not doing that they [should] do to really govern in the countries.”
‘Step into the light’ – corruption reporting project Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project co-founder and publisher Drew Sullivan told RNZ Pacific that anytime a country that was not able to do the kind of accountability journalism that they should be doing, this damaged media throughout the region.
“It creates a model for illiberal actors in the region to imitate what’s going on in that country,” Sullivan said.
“So this has really moved forward in allowing journalists again to do their job and that’s really important.”
Fiji journalists, Sullivan said, had done an amazing job resisting limitations for as long as they could.
“Fiji was really a black hole of journalism [in] that the journalists could not participate in on a global community because they couldn’t find the information; they weren’t allowed to write what they needed to write.
“So this is really a step forward into the light to really bring Fiji and media back into the global journalism community.”
Korean cult investigation
Last year, OCCRP published a major investigation on Fiji, working with local journalists to expose the expansion of the controversial Korean Chirstain-cult Grace Road Church under the Bainimarama regime.
Rabuka’s government is currently investigating Grace Road.
Sullivan said OCCRP will continue to support Fijian journalists.
“But [the repealing of the act] will allow a lot more stories to be done and a lot more people will understand how the world really works, especially in Fiji.”
Fred Wesley and Rakesh Kumar from The Fiji Times, Samantha Magick from Islands Business, and OCCRPs co-founder and publisher Drew Sullivan in Port Vila. Image: Lydia Lewis/RNZ Pacific
USP's Emalus campus in Port Vila . . . base of the Pacific law students who initiated Vanuatu's climate initiative at the United Nations. Image: USP
By Kalinga Seneviratne in Suva
There was euphoria at the campus of the University of the South Pacific (USP) in Suva in Fiji last Thursday when news came from New York that a historic resolution on climate action had been adopted unanimously at the United Nations General Assembly.
The resolution refers to the International Court of Justice case that would result in an advisory opinion clarifying nations’ obligations to tackle the climate crisis and the consequences they should face for inaction that could be cited in climate court cases in the future.
The campaign for the landmark resolution, supported by more than 130 member countries, started its journey in 2019 when a group of final-year law students conceived the project as an extra-curricular activity known as “learning by doing” on USP’s international environmental law course at their campus in Port Vila in Vanuatu.
USP’s law course coordinator Dr Justin Rose . . . “elated” over the students’
success on the world stage. Image: The Conversation
An elated Dr Justin Rose, adjunct associate professor of law and coordinator of the 2019 class where the campaign originated, told University World News from New York where he had joined his former students for the UN vote that it was any lecturers dream to see such results achieved by the students he had guided.
“Teaching and learning about climate change and climate change governance can increasingly be somewhat depressing — I teach what are essentially the same problems, and the same proposed but unimplemented solutions, that were taught to me at ANU [Australian National University] in 1992 when I studied the course I now coordinate.
“Those same problems and solutions have been ignored for so long that catastrophic climate impacts are occurring,” notes Rose.
Then in 2019 he set up an extra-curricular exercise that students could volunteer for.
A different skillset
“There were 20 participants from a class of 140,” he said, recalling how the project started.
“It was a way to teach a different skillset to those interested in doing some extra work and to empower them to do something positive about climate change.
“The exercise was, firstly, to discuss among the group the most productive legal action Pacific island countries could initiate within international law, and secondly to prepare letters and a brief that could be sent to PIF [Pacific Island Forum] leaders seeking to persuade them to implement it,” explained Rose.
When, at the annual summit meeting of the PIF leaders in 2019, the leaders only “noted” the proposal, the students did not give up but instead formed an organisation — Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) — to start what soon became a global youth campaign for an International Court of Justice climate change opinion.
Their key objective was to convince the governments of the world to seek an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice answering a question that would develop new international law integrating legal obligations around environmental treaties and basic human rights.
They were soon joined by the World’s Youth for Climate Justice.
The world ‘has listened’ “We are just ecstatic that the world has listened to the Pacific youth and has chosen to take action. From what started in a Pacific classroom four years ago,” noted Cynthia Houniuhi, the Solomon Islands-based president of PISFCC, who was one of the original law students at USP that initiated the project.
“We in the Pacific live the climate crisis. My home country Solomon Islands is struggling. Through no fault of our own, we are living with devastating tropical cyclones, flooding, biodiversity loss and sea-level rise.
“The intensity and frequency of it is increasing each time. We have contributed the least to the global emissions that are drowning our land,” said Houniuhi in a statement released from New York.
“The vote in the United Nations is a step in the right direction for climate justice.”
The International Court of Justice will now hold hearings and hear evidence on the obligations of states in respect to climate change, with a view to handing down an advisory opinion in 2024.
A favourable opinion should make it easier to hold polluting countries legally accountable for failing to tackle the climate emergency, possibly with compensatory payments given to victim countries.
“This isn’t the end of our campaign for climate justice. The court process will unfold, taking evidence from around the world,” said Vishal Prasad, a campaigner for PISFCC and a graduate from USP in politics and law.
“The real work begins in applying whatever the court advisory opinion says in domestic law, especially in countries that continue to drive the climate crisis with their toxic emissions.”
Merilyn Temakon, an assistant lecturer in legislation and intellectual property law at USP, said: “I am very proud indeed of these students as one of their leaders is Solomon Yeo whom I had the privilege of teaching.
“I was invited on one or two occasions to sit in the main conference room at Emalus (Vanuatu campus) and to listen to their presentations on the effect of climate change,” she recalls.
“At that time there were only a few active members, but now the whole of the PICs [Pacific Island Countries] and half the globe are behind their submission.”
Countries face escalating losses USP politics and international affairs Associate Professor Sandra Tarte, who sent out an email to all colleagues on March 30 saying “Colleagues, we did it”, told University World News that the resolution emerged out of “mounting frustration at the mismatch between the global community’s rhetoric and action on climate change amid escalating losses for countries such as Vanuatu, which face an existential threat due to sea-level rise”.
The frustration spawned a social movement led by Vanuatu law students turned youth activists, and work on the resolution was led by Indigenous lawyers in the Pacific, she said.
Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Ishmael Kalsakau, speaking after the vote at the UN General Assembly, said: “Today we have witnessed a win for climate justice of epic proportions. Vanuatu sees today’s historic resolution as the beginning of a new era in multilateral climate cooperation.”
Solomon Yeo, one of the students involved in the initial project at USP, who was part of Vanuatu’s delegation to the UN General Assembly meeting, argues that securing the resolution demonstrates that Pacific youth can play a part in tackling climate change.
“Today we celebrate four years of arduous work in convincing our leaders and raising global awareness of the initiative,” he told Radio New Zealand, speaking from New York.
“The adopted resolution is a testament that Pacific youth can play an instrumental role in advancing global climate action [and] young people’s voices must remain an integral part of the process.”
“We are enormously proud of everything our alumni at PISFCC have achieved,” said USP vice-chancellor and president Professor Pal Ahluwalia in a statement.
“These are exactly the kind of high-achieving publicly minded graduates that we aim to produce.”
Dr Kalinga Seneviratne is consultant lecturer with the University of the South Pacific journalism programme based in Suva. This article was first published by University World News and is republished with permission.