The Pacific Journalism Review: Te Koakoa is a peer-reviewed journal examining media issues and communication in the South Pacific, Asia-Pacific, Australia and New Zealand.
Founded by Professor David Robie in 1994 at the University of Papua New Guinea, it was later published at the University of the South Pacific.
Pacifications: The erosion of press freedom in Oceania
By David Robie in Arena Magazine
Abstract: Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says, “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
Freedom of the press is the guarantor of these rights. Although the practice of independent journalism is, internationally, frequently under attack, vigorous and courageous reporting of events by reporters in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and South Africa over the past few years has reminded the world that openness and freedom of expression are cornerstones of democracy.
It is ironic, then, that several nations in the South Pacific should be heading in the other direction, imposing draconian restrictions on the news media, sufficient to constitute a threat to democracy in the region.
Independent journalist David Robie in Auckland in 1992 . . . "It's ironic that my work is published more outside New Zealand than here." Image: Kevin Lanwer/Harbour News
“It’s ironic that my work is published more outside New Zealand than it is here.” (Article first published in 1992).
PROFILE:By Murray Horton
“My conception of reporting may seem somewhat unorthodox — perhaps some would say heretical. As members of human society, I believe reporters should regard their responsibilities as being contractual obligations to editors, and their own personal interests. A simple illustration: a child being beaten to a pulp by a bully. A reporter who rushes to record the scene with a camera and tape recorder might succeed as a journalist, but [they] fail as a human being. [Their] first responsibility is to rescue the child. A reporter is not an electronic computer digesting dispassionately the facts with which [they] are confronted. [They are] endowed with reason and conscience bequeathed by many centuries of human experience. [They] cannot remain coldly aloof and objective when basic human issues are involved. My concept of reporting is not just to record history, but to help shape it in the right direction.”
— Wilfred Burchett in his 1969 book Passport.
“Watch out for a fiction writer named David Robie masquerading as a journalist and an instant expert on the Philippines . . . It’s really amazing why many foreign newspapers send idiots to this country when they could have told them instead to stay in their cells in the insane asylum back home where they can merrily manufacture mad stories. . . . And to think that many of us seem to have more faith in these parasites who just fly in, eat and drink on some local sucker, bat off an analysis, then fly out.”
— Philippine Daily Inquirer column, “Idiots sent to smear us”.
“[It] was written by David Robie, a New Zealand freelance journalist who has earned himself the rare distinction among French and Tahitian government and French military officials as being one of the most unpopular Anglo-Saxon journalists working in the South Pacific.”
— Tahiti Sun Press
“Ah, David Robie. The closest thing we’ve got to a war correspondent.”
— A Christchurch Press journalist
“Who knows, Robie and Rabuka may both go down in history as putting the Pacific Islands on the political map!”
— A Massey University professor
Objectivity in journalism is a myth. Most journalists are subjective, whether they admit it or not. And most media institutions are extremely subjective. Their inherent bias is cloaked in so-called “news judgment”. In fact, objectivity is merely a euphemism for reporting from a position that reflects the status quo, and the values reported by the establishment. Any reporter who deviates from that narrow position, or is perceived as a Leftist, is branded “biased”.
“I see my role as a journalist to be even-handed, to report on issues that need to be debated as well. If there’s a can of worms within a progressive movement, then that needs to be exposed. You shouldn’t hide things under the carpet just because it happens to be Leftwing.”
David Robie is that great rarity among the dwindling and dispirited band of gutless New Zealand journalists. He travels his beat (Asia/Pacific) regularly to see for himself; he freelances (albeit, even more tenuously); he is a progressive, whose scrupulously researched articles appear in both the mainstream media and NZ Monthly Review; and he is constantly the subject of personal controversy.
In the course of his work, Robie has been arrested at gunpoint by the French military in Kanaky New Caledonia. He was on board the Rainbow Warrior as a journalist for more than 10 weeks leading up to when it was bombed in July 1985. He hasn’t been allowed into Fiji since the 1987 coups, a fact which hampers his defamation suit against the Suva-based Islands Business magazine (for which he wrote as a chief correspondent for eight years).
His 1989 book, Blood on their Banner, had to be published in Swedish first because the prospective New Zealand publisher wanted to cut out [a chapter], specifically on East Timor, West Papua and Indonesian colonialism. He has regularly been the subject of smear campaigns and he was vilified by one section of the Māori nationalist movement and their Pākehā supporters because of his Monthly Review exposé of a clique running the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement (“Anatomy of a hijack”, NZ Monthly Review, No 328, December 1990, pp.16-21).
“There was a feeling among a number of so-called progressive activists that I should not have written about the internal workings of an indigenous group. I regard that as a very fascist approach. Rather than discuss the issue openly, they want to shoot the messenger.”
News clippings about David Robie’s Asia-Pacific work in 1992 . . . breaking the stereotypes. Image: NZ Monthly Review
Robie, who describes himself as “independent”, has certainly paid a high price for being the closest New Zealand journalist to John Pilger (or one of his mentors, the late great Wilfred Burchett). He lives in Auckland, working from his Grey Lynn home, which is the office for [Café Pacific media]. Launched in 1991, it operates from his converted garage. But his work rarely appears in the Auckland press. He is better known to Christchurch readers of The Press, and even there his features appear a lot less frequently than they used to. He was also for several years a regular contributor to The Listener and The Dominion.
“It’s ironic that my work is published more outside New Zealand than it is here.” Robie writes for several overseas publications, including the Pacific Islands Monthly, and his articles are syndicated to 250 newspapers worldwide by a London-based agency, Gemini News Service.
Robie is regarded as anathema by the media establishment. More than once he has been interviewed for commissioned profiles for major magazines. Not one has actually been published — “not sexy” enough was the reason one writer was given by his editor. [Later, in 2002, The Listener published a profile by Mark Revington — “Guns and money”.]
The 1990 launch of Blood on their Banner was ignored by the New Zealand media and courtesy of yours truly, the [now closed] Christchurch Star saw fit to make a major feature out of the launch speech by Race Relations Conciliator Chris Laidlaw. For the 1992 Tu Galala: Social Change in the Pacific book launch, Robie secured the telegenic former Prime Minister David Lange to make the speech. That, and not the book per se, drew the coverage.
Blood on their Banner, 1989 . . . controversial criticisms of some sections of the Pacific media. Image: Zed Books
Since the advent of the Employment Contracts Act, Robie has found freelancing the toughest it has ever been, and has been considering other challenges. He was recently shortlisted For Amnesty International’s director of media relations job in London. [Robie was later appointed head of journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea in Port Moresby.]
Even getting around his usual traps is no longer straightforward. For the most recent Pacific trip, to Papua New Guinea, he travelled as a business “consultant”, not a journalist. This is due to PNG’s official sensitivity to journalists on the Bougainville issue, one which Robie has covered firsthand.
There was nothing in Robie’s perfectly ordinary Kiwi upbringing to suggest that he would become a controversial Asia-Pacific writer. It was only as an adult that he discovered his great-great grandfather, James Robie, was a crusading journalist in Edinburgh. He edited and published the Caledonian Mercury (1860-1866), campaigning for the abolition of slavery in the United States, and against social injustice in his own country.
“It dawned on me that it was in the blood, that he wrote these 40 or 50-page political tracts.”
Robie is 47 and the oldest of three siblings. His father was a factory manager and is now retired in Pauanui. He grew up in Eastbourne, going to Wellington Boys College. He was a carnivorous youth, trapping possums for pocket money — he had to deliver sackloads of ears to the NZ Forest Service to prove his tally. He also hunted deer and goats with a bow and arrow — archery was his school sport.
He was a Queen’s Scout, representing New Zealand at a World Jamboree at Marathon Bay, Greece, when he was almost 18, and while he was abroad he spent time in France, which gave him the urge to travel.
A love of tramping compelled him to enrol in forestry at Victoria University and he spent his first year living in Kaingaroa Forest, in the central North Island. While there he rethought his direction in life, realising that he had enjoyed writing at school — “and was very good at it”.
During his second year at Victoria, he also worked for the Forest Service publications division. After leaving university, he started as a trainee journalist on The Dominion.
It was strictly a job at that stage. “I had a very apolitical background, my political awakening came later.” Motivated by a personal friendship with the son of NZ’s then military chief-of-staff, whose father was later ambassador to South Vietnam, Robie later volunteered for the Army with the view of going to Vietnam for adventure. “I came to my senses” before signing up.
In 1966, he left The Dominion as a subeditor and moved to Auckland as assistant editor of the AA magazine, Auto Age, and then moved on to become a subeditor on The New Zealand Herald. “I worked there for eight months, and it was the worst paper I’ve ever worked for. It was, and is, so incredibly conservative.”
In 1968, he married his first wife, Penelope. That year they moved to Australia for the big OE and ended up staying overseas for 10 years. He started as a sub/reporter on the Melbourne Herald. “I was there at the end of its increasing circulation period, then it started to lose to TV, as virtually all afternoon paper have.”
He saw an advert for “crusading and fearless journos” to join a new newspaper, and moved to the Melbourne Sunday Observer as chief subeditor. Published by the transport magnate Gordon Barton, this was the first major newspaper in Australia to use colour, and the first to be strong on social justice issues.
In 1970, at 24, he became the youngest metropolitan editor in Australia. However, like NZ and the US, that country was being torn apart by the Vietnam War and conscription. He wrote editorials urging liable Australian young men to burn their draft cards. He was prosecuted for publishing the internationally infamous and gut-wrenching series of photos of the My Lai massacre. The actual charge was astonishing: “Obscenity.” It never came to anything, nor did any of the various libel claims.
One of the Sunday Observer’s principal foreign correspondents was Wilfred Burchett, the Australian journalist who beat the US blockade and travelled to Hiroshima to reveal the horror of the nuclear devastation to the world. Because the 1949-72 Liberal/Country government deemed Burchett a communist, his Australian passport was stolen from him, reputedly by the CIA. When his father died, the Australian government still refused him a passport.
The Observer flew Burchett in to Brisbane from Noumea on a chartered plane. Once in the country of his citizenship, the authorities were powerless, as Burchett had committed no crime — literally, the first act of the Whitlam Labor government was to issue him a passport.
Managerial gutlessness soon got rid of editor David Robie. Several editorial staff were dismissed (mainly photographers for “using too much film”), and he was fired by the managing director for allowing the use of the word “frigging” in the regular political carton strip. He secured an out of court settlement to ensure his contract was paid in full. That was the end of Australia for him — today there are no crusading newspapers there, the last being The National Times; no Western country has a more vertically integrated media ownership structure.
He and Penelope moved to South Africa where he became the chief subeditor and night editor at Johannesburg’s Rand Daily Mail: “My approach to journalism was very much shaped by editors like Laurence Gandar, Raymond Louw and Alister Sparks.”
In contrast to NZ media, both the Sunday Observer and the Mail were non-establishment newspapers. The latter was an outspoken anti-apartheid paper. It was the conscience of the white community and some of its senior journalists had been jailed for simply doing their job. It has since gone out of business [1985] because it was perceived to be increasingly read by blacks and then its advertising revenue collapsed.
Robie could only take two years of apartheid South Africa and had to leave for the “sake of his sanity”. “It’s an utterly abhorrent system.” They refused to have servants: “I was known among the more reactionary journalists as the ‘pinko from New Zealand’.” He tackled the notorious apartheid laws on quoting “banned” people, and publishing “banned” photos, such as ones of racially mixed couples.
Part of the South African apartheid government letter in January 1975 declaring journalist David Robie barred at the border. Image: APR screenshot
“I won’t go back to South Africa until there is majority rule.” After he left, he was declared persona non grata in early 1975 — curiously enough the papers, from Interior Minister Theo Gerdener, were delivered addressed to him “c/o The ‘Paris Match'” magazine via the British diplomatic bag in Nairobi, Kenya, when he was living there. Just to prove that he was as unwelcome in black dictatorships, he was also declared persona non grata in Zaire.
After six months travelling overland in Africa, they ended up in Ethiopia where he spent a year as group features editor on the Nairobi Daily Nation, the Aga Khan’s anti-colonial newspaper. “I had the shock of coming from South Africa, where some media tackled the government, to an independent country where the media basically did not buck the system.”
A senior journalist was abducted and detained by the GSU special police for being about to expose a pharmaceutical scandal. The paper did not campaign for his release, but went cap in hand to the government.
Travelling in their Kombi van through the rainforests of Zaire as part of the transAfrican freelance trek in 1974. Image: David Robie/Café Pacific
After Kenya, they spent a further six months travelling in Africa. Robie bought a rubber stamp kit, issuing his own vehicle registration papers and his own visa for Zaire. [This was necessary to remove any evidence of them having been in South Africa]. They travelled through Idi Amin’s Uganda, central and western Africa, across the Sahara Desert to Algeria, then through Spain to France, freelancing as they went.
From 1975-77, Robie was a desk editor and foreign correspondent for Agence France-Presse news agency, based in Paris. He covered the African boycott of the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, Canada, and had a brief career as a sports writer, including covering rugby internationals at the Parc des Princes in Paris, and in Toulouse.
“In many respects I found working in Paris enormously stimulating. I started becoming intensely interested in French neocolonialism in the Pacific.”
Previously Robie had been a typical Eurocentric Kiwi. The Kirk Labour government taking French nuclear testing to the World Court was a big story, and Robie covered Greenpeace founder David McTaggart’s “piracy” case against the French military. Robie was also writing for the now defunct Nation Review, in Australia — and he wants it known that he has occasionally written for rightwing magazines, including To The Point, published in Brussels and later exposed as being financed by the South African Muldergate slush fund.
“New Zealand international coverage generally, not just the Pacific, is abysmal. No daily newspaper has a proper foreign editor with any proper resources.”
In 1978, he and his former wife returned to Auckland for family reasons. “I hated coming back, it took about two years to adjust to the parochial mentality.” He was foreign news editor of the Auckland Star until 1981.
“At the time it was probably New Zealand’s best newspaper, certainly the most liberal. I had a personal frustration, I wanted more Pacific and international coverage of our own. I was writing on the Pacific; I found myself in the ridiculous situation of using my holidays to travel the Pacific and sell the stories to the Star. I decided to leave and work freelance.”
Robie covered the 1981 Springbok rugby tour protests for the London Sunday Times. He was on the ground at Hamilton, where invading protesters forced the cancellation of the game, with the crowd baying: “Let’s get the journalists — they started it all.”
He freelanced on Pacific and development issues until 1983. Indeed, his first book had the unexciting title “United Nations Development Programme in the South Pacific”. Then he edited Insight, the magazine for American Express cardholders. It rapidly became the same old story — management didn’t like its punchy style, the Bob Jones columns, or the Brockie cartoons.
“They were just gutless, the general managers were abysmal.” The publishing company lost the contract, so he became redundant as editor and his final cover story on the “owners of New Zealand” was censored because it was too “controversial”. [The cover story was later published in another magazine, New Outlook]. It was the last time he worked for a boss.
Since 1985, David Robie has been an Asia-Pacific affairs independent journalist, and for a time he was associate editor of New Outlook magazine. “I write a diverse range of artices, depending on the publications. You wouldn’t condemn a rugby writer for not writing about golf.”
He spent almost 11 weeks on the Rainbow Warrior’s final voyage in 1985. He was the only journalist out of six on board. His 1986 book, Eyes Of Fire: The Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior concentrates on the actual voyage and the evacuation of the Rongelap nuclear test victims, rather than the bombing of the Warrior in Auckland harbour on July 10. [Although that is covered strongly too – the book was reviewed by CAFCA Watchdog’s reviewer, the late Jeremy Agar here].
Eyes Of Fire,by David Robie, the Rainbow Warrior book, 1986. Image: APR screenshot
“It wasn’t a Greenpeace manifesto; indeed Greenpeace would be quite embarrassed by some of its contents. It’s typical of the shallowness of the NZ media that they weren’t interested in the Rongelap evacuation. Any suggestion that Fernando Pereira’s death was a tragic accident is an obscene lie — it was a miracle that at least people weren’t killed.” An American environmental film, based partly on the book, is still in the offing.
“New Zealand international coverage generally, not just the Pacific, is abysmal. No daily newspaper has a proper foreign editor with any proper resources. It’s almost impossible to get a New Zealand perspective on events happening outside NZ. This is in contrast to Australia. It’s partly to do with the lack of competition, but it also reflects the traditional parochialism of NZ society. For the NZ media, the Pacific begins and ends with the Cook islands, Fiji, Samoa, Tokelau and Tonga — and even then the coverage is spasmodic and reacts to things like cyclones.
“The political and economic powerhouse is Papua New Guinea, but there is no coverage. Even the Bougainville struggle gets only spasmodic coverage. New Caledonia, Solomon islands and Vanuatu get only spasmodic and distorted coverage, for example the Matignon Accords (in New Caledonia), are being perceived as being highly successful and there is no coverage of the enormous opposition to them.
“There was a recent delegation of NZ journalists there, with no previous experience of the country. They believed what they were fed by French officials and leaders of the Kanak independence movement, who were alleged to have been collaborators.
“The NZ media will only cover events outside NZ if there is a junket provided.”
Blood on their Banner . . . the Philippines edition published by Malaya Books, 1991. Image: APR screenshot
As a journalist, Robie accompanied the New Zealand delegation to the 1988/89 Asia/Pacific People’s Conference on Peace and Development in the Philippines. Here he ended up marrying his Mindanao facilitator, Del Abcede, to the strains of the “Internationale”. Del was a teacher union leader and organiser at home. She was a driving force in the politicised section of NZ’s Filipino diaspora population, secretary of the Philippine migrant centre in Auckland, and is actively involved in the broader progressive movement.
Since then, Robie has been to the Philippines several times, including being the only New Zealander on a study tour by Australian journalists — he was guest editor of a special issue of Diarista, the journal of the host National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP).
He has had more than one series of articles on the Philippines published in New Zealand’s dailies, and he specialised in analysing NZ’s forestry aid project in Bukidnon, Mindanao. Both of his two most recent books have included Filipino content. Indeed, Blood on their Banner is the only book by a NZ writer to be published in the Philippines. Leading Filipina activist Rita Baua is one of the contributors to Tu Galala: Social Change in the Pacific.
It was Blood on their Banner’s Asia content that led to its prospective publisher wanting unacceptable cuts.
Robie’s writing on the Philippines has trodden on some very sensitive local toes. A 1989 Philippine Daily Inquirer column, entitled “Idiots sent to smear us” was written by former editor-in-chief Federico Pascual. He attacked Robie for accusing the newspaper of suppressing human rights stories — one of the Inquirer’s reporters had handed him a file of affidavits about such stories that had been censored. Robie wrote a letter to the newsaper for publication, challenging Pascual. It was never published. Neither was a further letter sent to the paper’s ombudsman (internal investigator).
Tu Galala: Social Change in the Pacific, 1992. Image: APR screenshot
A year later, Robie met Pascual by chance at the University of the Philippines when gthey were panellists together on the issue of press freedom. When Robie approached Pascual and mentioned the column, the former editor denied having written anything and then scurried away in embarrassment.
It was Blood on their Banner’s Asian content that led to the prospective NZ publisher wanting unacceptable cuts, and to the ludicrous spectacle of a book on the Pacific, by a New Zealand writer, being published first in Swedish.
Not that Robie has abandoned the Pacific. It is still his bread and butter. Although he is a freelancer, he is not a glory seeking individualist, but an active unionist. He is JAGPRO’s representative in the Pacific Journalists’ Association, and is involved in a lot of press freedom issues in the region. He was instrumental in securing industry and progressive movement opposition to the 1991 Auckland visit by Fiji’s coup leader Sitiveni Rabuka to address the conference of the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA), a conservative organisation of Pacific media bosses, journalists and officials.
Above all else, David Robie is an extremely good writer and he has the bits of paper and trophies to prove it — ranging from the NZ Media Peace Prize in 1985 to the Qantas Best Feature Writer Award in 1989. His articles cover our own backyard, an area shamefully neglected by the media here. His stories are rooted in his own first hand observations.
He has chosen the financially precarious path of freelancing, and he has never shied from controversy, whether with reactionary authorities and their media mouthpieces, or with apologists hiding behind “indigenousness”. As far as New Zealand journalists and writers go, he is virtually one of a kind.
One recent event illustrates my point. After attending the Auckland launch of Tu Galala with my wife, all four of us later went to Kelly Tarlton’s Underwater World. It affected us in different ways. I was a rubber-necking tourist; the Filipinas decided to cook fish; and David drew our attention to the shark turds in the tank.
Always the journalist, always in duty. And that’s what this country and region are sorely lacking — journalists who are not merely gushing admiration for the killer efficiency of the sharks in our midst, but point out that they are showering us with shit.
Murray Horton is secretary and organiser of the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) and an advocate of a range of progressive causes for more than the past five decades. This article was first published in 1992 under the title “David Robie: One of a kind” in the NZ Monthly Review which has now ceased publication. (The author’s original title was “Foreign Correspondent”). A sequel to David Robie’s Blood on their Banner book mentioned in this article was published in 2014, Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face : Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific (reviewed by Murray Horton here). It was endorsed by investigative journalist John Pilger.
“The Pacific is in upheaval — growing poverty, nuclear testing, independence struggles, militarisation and massive social dislocation are pressing, often intractable issues.
Tu Galala: Social Change in the Pacific, 1992.
“In Tu Galala (Fijian meaning ‘freedom’), indigenous and palagi writers describe the impact of these influences on their people.
Topics covered include the Bougainville crisis and the environmental impact of mining on indigenous communities in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and Papua New Guinea; hazardous waste dumping and the Johnston Atoll chemical weapons burn-off controversy; human rights violations in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and East Timor; ‘development’ in Kanaky/New Caledonia, and tino rangatiratanga in Aotearoa/New Zealand.” — Back cover
Preparation for Tu Galala was assisted 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 Rainbow Warrior in Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour on 10 July 1985.
Contents:
Introduction: Poverty and privilege — David Robie and Delia Abcede
Part One: The Region
Pacific Overview: Not So New World Order — Robert T. Robertson with Akosita Tamanisau
People’s Movements in the Pacific — Rita Baua
Militarism in the Pacific and the Case of Fiji — Owen Wilkes and Sitiveni Ratuva
Chiefs and Commoners: The Indigenous Dilemma — Jone Dakuvula
The Environment: ‘Who Gives a Damn?’ — Bunny McDiarmid
Bougainville and Mining: ‘Breaking All Five Fingers’ — Roger Moody
Indonesian Colonialism in the Pacific — Liem Soei Liong
Human Rights: Abductions and Torture — David Robie
Part Two: Case Studies
Aotearoa: Tino Rangatiratanga — Pauline E. Tangiora
Belau: Nuclear-Free Isles Under Siege — Ed Rampell
Fiji: Women, Poverty and Post-Coup Pressure — ‘Atu Emberson-Bain
Kanaky: The ‘Peace’ Signed with our Blood — Susanna Ounei-Small
Tahiti: In Bondage to the Bomb — Marie-Thérèse Danielsson
Tonga: The Day of Redckoning — S. ‘Akilisi Pohiva
Samoa: Reclaiming Our Cultural Memory — Tialetagi Poumau
Major-General Sitiveni Rabuka . . . from military coup leader to civilian politician. An "ulterior motive" media invitation to New Zealand? Image: Matthew McKee/The Word
Former Fiji military strongman Major-General Sitiveni Rabuka is now deputy Prime Minister in the civilian interim government. As leader of the 1987 coups d’état, Rabuka closed newspapers and jailed journalists. Now an invitation for him to address a media convention in New Zealand has stirred a bitter controversy. Accusing the conference organisers of “abysmal judgment”, one newspaper contrasted their attitude towards Rabuka with the fate of the recent coup plotters in the Soviet Union who now face charges of treason.
By David Robie in The Word
An invitation to Fiji coup leader Major-General Sitiveni Rabuka to be keynote speaker at a media convention in New Zealand next month [October, 1991] has plunged South Pacific newspapers and journalists into a bitter row over ethics and press freedoms.
Rabuka, who deposed the elected government of the late Prime Minister Dr Timoci Bavadra at gunpoint in 1987 and abrogated Fiji’s constitution, recently quit the military and was appointed to the interim government as co-deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Home Affairs.
The Pacific Islands News Association — a regional organisation of media publishers, editors and broadcasters — invited the general to speak at its annual conference in Auckland on October 7-11.
Although the previous Labour government twice blocked attempts by Rabuka to visit New Zealand, the present National government has signalled warmer relations between New Zealand and Fiji. It declared there would be no opposition to a formal visa application by the general.
Foreign Minister Don McKinnon said that if Rabuka visited New Zealand he would be offered “the courtesies normally extended to a deputy prime minister”. New Zealand officials now regard the coup leader as a civilian politician. Fiji is due early next year to have a general election under a new republican constitution which is condemned by opponents as “racist and unjust”.
Pro-democracy expatriates living in New Zealand, and the anti-apartheid group Hart, are among movements that have protested against the planned visit. They threaten to mount demonstrations against Rabuka.
Several newspapers and journalists’ organisations have also harshly criticised the invitation. The Dominion published a scathing editorial, accusing PINA of “abysmal judgment” and “ignorance” and a New Zealand Herald report questioned what it called a possible “ulterior motive”.
Journalists jailed, harassed
The NZ Journalists and Graphic Press Union (Jagpro) said it was ironic that PINA had invited Rabuka when he represented a regime that had jailed, intimidated and harassed journalists in Fiji and arbitrarily restricted the entry of foreign journalists — including New Zealanders.
Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka in 2023 . . . Now a champion of free media and free speech. Image: Fijivillage
National secretary Tony Wilton said New Zealand journalists were effectively barred from Fiji and last year the independent radio news service Pacnews had been expelled from the country. Pacnews now operates from Honiara, Solomon Islands.
Wilton noted that “PINA is neither a New Zealand news organisation, as has been reported, nor is it affiliated with the International Federation of Journalists”.
Frank Senge, a leading Papua New Guinea journalist and president of the Pacific Journalists’ Association — representing working journalists throughout the region — said thed the invitation showed “remarkable naivety”. He added that it would inevitably give credibility to the coup leader.
The PJA, founded two years ago, is supported by the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), which represents 150,000 journalists internationally, and its affiliates, Jagpro and the Australian Journalists’ Association.
Suva-based PINA defended its move, saying it was “ludicrous” to infer that it was in any way expressing approval of Rabuka’s role in the 1987 coups. Newspapers in Fiji also rallied to the defence of PINA. The Daily Post said that if Rabuka formally accepted the invitation, “it will be a coup in itself for PINA. It will also demonstrate his courage in standing up [for] what he believes in.”
Among PINA’s fiounders is former Fiji Times publisher Sir Leonard Usher, who was for many years a publicist for the establishment Alliance Party. Many members of the Alliance government defeated in the April 1987 general election — including present interim Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara — regained power throughout Rabuka’s coups.
House arrest
After Rabuka seized power on 14 May 1987, troops were ordered into the offices of Fiji’s two daily newspapers and their journalists were put under house arrest. Foreign journalists were harassed and detained their hotel rooms raided, tapes and notes seized. Radio broadcasts were censored.
The papers were shut again after the second coup four months later. One of the papers, the Hong Kong and New Zealand-owned Fiji Sun, refused to publish again under censorship and closed. Since then Fiji journalists have faced being jailed without charge, threatened with government licensing of newspapers, and harassed by a zealous Minister of Information, Ratu Inoke Kubuabola.
Reports by the Pacific Journalists’ Association, Amnesty International and other organisations have cited examples of the harassment and intimidation. PINA has also played a role in defending press freedoms and in recent times the harassment has been less marked.
On one occasion, in 1988, the now retired editor of The Fiji Times, Vijendra Kumar, was arrested by soldiers and detained over a typographical error which upset Rabuka. A reporter of the paper was also jailed without charge.
Last month [August 1991], charges of “malicious fabrication” against the publisher of the Daily Post, Taniela Bolea and two staff journalists, were dropped. The journalists had been charged last October [1990] for publishing a news report about plans by students to burn copies of the republican constitution following the kidnapping and torture of Suva academic Dr Anirudh Singh by Fijian soldiers.
In July, a leading Tongan journalist, Matangi Tonga editor Pesi Fonua, was briefly detained in Fiji while travelling to Tonga from Vanuatu. This followed the two-day detention of an Australian Broadcasting Corporation television crew invited by the Fiji Rugby Union to broadcast an international match between the touring England team and Fiji.
The Dominion which has often published outspoken editorials condemning the regime in Fiji was the target of a $1 million libel lawsuit following an article harshly critical of Rabuka written by Wellington businessman Sir Robert Jones. In its recent editorial, the paper mocked a PINA spokesperson for defending the Rabuka invitation by saying that the association had a tradition of asking “outstanding” Pacific leaders to address it.
Government frogmarched
“Rabuka is outstanding first and foremost in being the first Pacific Islander to have overthrown a democratically elected government,” the paper said. “Perhaps PINA believes it is time to acknowledge the achievement of the man who led his guntoting, gasmasked soldiers into Fiji’s Parliament in May 1987 and frogmarched the the lawful government off into custody.”
“Likeminded spirits tried something similar in Moscow last month [August 1991] and all around the world the consensus was that it was the people who opposed them who were outstanding. The perpetrators face charges of treason. Rabuka is lucky, not outstanding.”
The Dominion said that perhaps PINA thought it was time to recognise Rabuka’s “brilliant” military career. In the first coup he sidelined two superior officers and then promoted himself from lieutenant-colonel to colonel. Then he rose to brigadier-general, a year later to major-general.”
The paper noted that Rabuka did not discriminate between the rights of Parliament and those of the Fourth Estate — “he savaged both”. It said it was not clear which of the outstanding achievements commended Rabuka most to PINA, but the organisation’s “abysmal judgment is”.
PINA’s president, Patteson Mae, replied in a statement that Rabuka had been invited because he “obviously is a controversial person whose actions had a profound lasting impact on modern Pacific Island affairs. Only blinkered people could fail to see that.”
The statement also attacked the New Zealand media, saying Rabuka’s attendance would give many New Zealand journalists an opportunity of interviewing him — an opportunity denied to them by restrictions placed by the Fiji government on the admission of foreign journalists, but also by the long and unfortunate marked reluctance of New Zealand media proprietors (with the praiseworthy exception of Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand) to spend the money it would cost to enable their journalists to develop any serious consistent first-hand cover of Pacific Island affairs.
“Basically, it needs a hurricane or a coup of a free trip to draw the New Zealand journalists to the islands; a pathetic commentary on the media of the country that claims to know the Pacific Islands best.”
NZ media ‘ignorance’
Turning its attack to Jagpro, the statement said the union’s comments were “more evidence of the general Pacific Islands ignorance of a large part of the New Zealand media. Jagpro could easily correct that deficiency by joining or supporting PINA, as some other NZ media organisations have done, notably the Community Newspapers’ Association and the Commonwealth Press Union’s NZ section.”
Fiji Times acting editor Mosese Velia said PINA’s stand was based on the “classic Voltaire defence of freedom of speech . . . I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” He added in an editorial that the unfortunate thing about the condemnation was that it came from “so-called democratic forces — people you’d think would be the first to man the barricades against the enemies of free speech”.
A letter in the next day’s Times from Islands Business Pacific publisher Robert Keith-Reid and editor Peter Lomas praised the paper for its “excellent editorial”, adding,”you probably put it even better than [PINA] did”. Keith-Reid and Lomas also launched into a bitter personal attack on Times news editor Yashwant Gaunder, who is also secretary of the Pacific Journalists’ Association.
Accusing Gaunder of bias and lack of balance in a frontpage story about the controversy, the PINA pair said he should have declared his link with the PJA. “The so-called PJA purports to represent the ‘working’ journalists of the region and has given PINA executives the strong impression that it regards PINA people as opposition and not colleagues. Gaunder . . . has expressed less than complimentary views of PINA and some PINA members.”
The letter added:”We are so far compelled to regard the so-called PJA as being the naive and wistful product of outmoded Australian and New Zealand leftwing thinking.” An editor’s footnote rejected the bias allegations by Keith-Reid and Lomas. But the paper did not point out the undeclared vested interest of the two writers — Lomas has held executive office in PINA and is believed to have “ghosted” the statement replying to NZ media criticisms; both men are key PINA publicists.
Ironically, the following week, on September 13, a meeting of Fiji journalists unanimously approved the formation of the Fiji Journalists’ Association. Representatives from the Daily Post, Radio FM96, Radio Fiji, Fiji Times, Pacific Islands Monthly and freelance writers and photograhers attended the meeting — but nobody from Islands Business magazine. Th inaugural national executive was given a mandate to affiliate to the PJA and IFJ. Said secretary Asaeli Lave, who attended the recent Port Vila conference if the PJA: “We aim to look after the interests of working journalists in Fiji.”
Disagree with editorials
Many Fiji journalists disagree with the editorial view of both Suva newspapers defending the Rabuka invitation — the letters were written by indigenous Fijian editors, one of them widely regarded as an apologist for the regime.
Richard Naidu, a former senior Fiji Times journalist and winner of Fiji’s inaugural journalist of the year award in 1984, believes the controversy should never have arisen. He also says the Fiji papers have missed the point of New Zealand critics and PINA has reacted “defensively and unprofessionally” to the criticism.
“The issue is not about freedom of speech; the major-general appears able to exercise free speech in Fiji and could certainly do so in New Zealand. The issue is why New Zealand journalists should be content to see the major-general on their home turf when the major-general’s government is not content to see them in Fiji,” he said.
“There is one other basic matter here, which professional journalists have regard to in the debate between working journalists in New Zealand and a bosses’ organisation like PINA. In the dark days of 1987, when Fiji journalists were unable to to publish, their New Zealand colleagues, for all their flaws and faults, continued to do what every journalist is charged to do — that is, they got the story out.”
This article was first published in The Word, the official publication of the New Zealand Journalists and Graphic Process Union, September 1991, pp. 2 & 3. The Jagpro conference passed a resolution condemning the invitation to Major-General Sitiveni Rabuka to speak in New Zealand, and declared on the front page of paper: “Rabuka isn’t welcome here, says Jagpro”.
Edgar Cadagat with the coffin he received through the mail: "I thought it was a bomb." Image: David Robie
On average seven journalists have been killed every year in the Philippines since Cory Aquino came to power. David Robie reports on a record of intimidation that is even worse than under the Marcos regime.
By David Robie in The Dominion
Death threats are all part of the job for Filipino journalist Edgar Cadagat. Bullets in the mail, “Your days are numbered” pamphlets, potshots and threatening phone calls are uncomfortably frequent.
Once, when the threats became too hot, Cadagat and his colleagues sandbagged the plate glass windows of their news agency office in Bocolod City on the central island of Negros.
But nithing has quite matched the Christmas “gift” Cadagat received in December. Arriving by special delivery from a private mail firm, he was immediately suspicious when the bulky looking envelope was put on his desk.
“I thought it was a bomb at first,” recalls Cadagat, a correspondent for international news agencies and a key official in the Union of Journalists of the Philippines. It turned out to be a cardboard miniature coffin.
"Dia Mista Praim Minista Sir . . . fixing things up kwik, or you'll be sori!" Image: PNG's Grassroots Strip
Mista Grasruts (Grassroots), the funniest cartoon character in the South Pacific, is cutting down on his beer, drinking fruit juice and setting a moral example — like his creator. David Robie reports.
By David Robie
Grassroots made quite a name for himself the year he became a “big fella” politician and contested the elections in Papua New Guinea.
He wanted to have his own red carpet. If it was good enough for the Kwin, as he calls the Queen in Tok Pisin (pidgin), it was good enough for him too.
His “people’s independent party of grassrooters” manifesto had simple rules: no running off to other parties, no selling out to overseas interests for less than 700 kina (NZ$308), and one fifth of all bribe money to paid over to the party leader — himself!
Mista Grasruts gave rival politicians a torrid time — when he had a spell from his Six Mile Black Market — greasing the voters and strangely he wasn’t sued.
He was at his irreverent best with Misis Kwin. And Her Majesty loved it. So much so that a set of originals of the Grassroots Letters were sent to Buckingham Palace.
Mista Grasruts . . . popular PNG personality, but didn’t get elected to Parliament. Image: Grassroots collection
Yet Mr Grassroots, arguably the most popular personality in the South Pacific, won only 325 votes in the 1982 election and failed to get his seat in the Papua New Guinean Parliament. (Much the same happened in 1987, too). But then he is only a cartoon character after all.
Had he been real, there is no doubt that the jovial, enterprising, scruffy, bearded and chain smoking Grassroots would be a remarkable political success in a country where politics revolves around personalities and patronage more than policies.
Hated or loved
Long a celebrity in the PNG Post-Courier, the biggest circulation newspaper [at the time] in Pacific island nations, Grassroots is either hated or loved. Few people fail to be moved strongly by him and his “wantok” (literally onetalk, or brother) friends.
He is a champion of the ordinary villager, or townsfolk, and their everyday lives and grievances.
When a European clergyman criticised Grassroots as the “subtle mockery of a warped colonialist’s mentality and the abusive shame” given to some Papua New Guineans, readers rallied to his defence.
Isuzu Lu . . . the commercial early precursor for Papua New Guinea Motors to the character Grassroots. Image: Grassroots collection
“How come some people can’t see the funny side of things, to even laugh at ourselves?” a Highlands woman from Goroka wrote to the newspaper. “People with no sense of humour should not write such insulting letters.
“I’m rather proud of Roots, that the cartoonist can translate our lives so accurately on to paper. I’m not ashamed of it, neither do I find it abusive. I don’t think the cartoonist has that intent either. We find it entertaining without finding faults and having some weird ideas inside.
“Keep Grassroots in the paper, we love humour — it’s lacking in this crazed world. There’s enough bad feelings around.”
The Best of Grassroots 1980-81. Image: Grassroots collection
Besides his exposure in the Post-Courier, Grassroots has built up a following through the rest of the Pacific through his cartoons in the Pacific Islands Monthly news magazine and other publications.
The creator
Who is Grassroots’ alter ego, his creator? He is softly spoken, beardless English artist Bob Browne who arrived in Papua New Guinea in 1971 and stayed [Editor’s note: he died in 2011].
On a two-week holiday in Morocco, Browne had faced Third World poverty for the first time. When he returned to London, he joined the the British aid agency Volunteer Service Overseas (VSO) and in 1971 was sent to Papua New Guinea where he went to work with the Catholic Mission as a photographer and designer with Wiriu Press.
English-born PNG cartoonist Bob Browne . . . the creator of Mr Grassroots. He died in 2011 leaving a remarkable legacy. Image: Grassroots collection
Browne produced his first cartoons for Wantok, the first (and only) Tok Pisin newspaper in the world, which was founded by Father Frank Mihalic.
About the same time he began doing his famous Izusu commercial cartoons, which eventually developed into the Grassroots theme.
“There was a rule a work that no English was to be spoken,” recalls Browne, “so I had to learn pidgin and out of necessity I became fluent in about six weeks.”
Grassroots also spoke pidgin most of the time when his cartoons first began appearing on 28 October 1980, but now he mainly speaks English (apart for a weekly educational strip in Tok Pisin).
The Grassroots Guide to PNG Pidgin. Image: Grassroots collection
“It’s a reflection that English is more commonly spoken these days, and also that many newspaper readers cannot speak pidgin,” says Browne.
Why the success?
Why is Grassroots, who was born by accident, so successful? Browne believes it is because he and his fellow cartoon characters — such as the saucepan-wielding Agnes and the smarty Charlie — feature “real Papua New Guinea people, saying real Papua New Guinea things”. The amusing sides of Papua New Guinea life result from “many cultures rubbing edge to edge so a lot of funny things happen”.
The Grassroots recipe for dealing with politicians in Papua New Guinea – and the Pacific. Image: Grassroots collection
As a cartoonist, Browne treads a fine line between saying something funny and making a point without unfairly savaging somebody.
“I appreciate that most politicians respond by laughing,” he says. “I think it is good for a country as a whole that people can laugh at themselves.”
Many readers have noticed big changes to the character of Grassroots in the last few years — especially in 1987 when he suddenly cut out smoking and began drinking orange juice more than beer. Post-Courier columnist Frank Senge analysed the changes recently, saying that Grassroots had taken to cleaning up his act.
“He has developed a gut, but that isn’t surprising. It is all the litres of beer he has been putting away instead of selling at his Six Mile Black Market. To be fair to the old guy, he isn’t that young anymore,” Senge said.
“His change in behavour is a little harder to place. he has grown almost media-shy. His language has improved dramatically. He has all but stopped drinking.
“I dare say he might be swapping his place at the Six Mile Black Market for a preacher’s pulpit!”
Shaved off his beard
In a recent cartoon, Grassroots shaved off most of his beard and told his mate, “Eh, Charlie . . . it’s me, Grass . . . your mate . . . don’t you recognise me?”
“Grass? Is that really you?” replies Charlie.
“Course it’s me. I know I look clean, but it’s still me . . . honest.”
Charlie: “How do I know for sure?”
Grassroots: “Lend me 10 bucks till next Friday!”
Charlie: “Em nau!! NOW I know it’s you!”
Perhaps the “clean up” isn’t so surprising considering there have been changes going on within the creator, too. Talk to Browne in his studio and you cannot help but notice the biblical quotations on the walls and his evangelical gleam.
Brown confesses that the changds in his life have influence his creation, that he has toned down the more obnoxious habits.
“In the early stages I wasn’t overly concerned about the effect the cartoon had on people. But I became more and more about a cartoon that blasphemed.”
And he felt he couldn’t glorify drunkenness, which had become a serious problem in Papua New Guinea.
A Grassroots strip . . . before his “clean up”. Image: Grassroots collection
Several cartoonists
These days Browne employs several cartoonists, including a Papua New Guinean. And the strip is a small part of the Grassroots Comic Company’s output — they produce a popular Grassroots calendar, greeting cards and other art work.
Once they used to produce t-shirts as well but there was little profit in that. Several book collections of Grassroots cartoons have also been published.
And while the artists get on with their illustrations, Mr Grassroots carried on with his caustic advice for politicians. He wrote in one cartoon letter:
“Dia Mista Praim Minista Sir,
“Eh, this changing of the mind bisnis it’s not good wan, Bro . . .
“We wanting to make a dil, and we the biggest union in the whole PNG. We the Grassroots Union of Night Traders and we wanting 150 percent inkris on our pay starting neks wik.
“If you’re not fixing it up kwik we closing down all the bilak makets and other nitetime bisnis (you know the wan). Then you’ll be sori!
“Yours, Grass (pres.), G.R.U.N.T.”
This article was first published in New Zealand’s Dominion Sunday Times, 10 December 1990.
Dr Anirudh Singh . . . "They put a noose around my neck." Image: David Robie/Café Pacific Media
From Café Pacific 1990 archives: The abduction and torture of a scientist by soldiers has exposed a sinister side to the current ruling regime in Fiji. David Robie writes for The Dominion.
By David Robie in The Dominion
Soft-spoken and unassuming, Dr Anirudh Singh plays down his role in Fiji as civil rights activist. Recalling the events of the past two months that led to his abduction and torture, the Indo-Fijian academic seems remarkably surprised at the international publicity he has unleashed.
He is anxious to put things in perspective. “Ask me who am I? What am I? Nobody has asked me these things.
“I’m really a scientist. I wasn’t so interested in politics before this happened.”
It troubles him. Besides the brutal physical attack on him by soldiers, the scars left from the torture and the smear attempts by the “regime’s propagandists”, Dr Singh wants to put the record straight.
He isn’t from Britain, as some newspapers have said. He proudly says he is a Fijian citizen, now a University of the South Pacific lecturer; he was in Britain for just three years completing his doctorate in physics.
And he would like to return to Leicester University to complete his research into the atomic structure of solids using a new technology which involves the use of a particle accelerator.
But Dr Singh, due in Auckland to address a public meeting tonight [18 December 1990] about his ordeal and other human rights abuses in in Fiji, must wait until at least after January when he and six colleagues face charges of sedition and unlawful assembly.
‘Political interference’
Defence lawyers believe “political interference” is involved in the case and have filed an application for a High Court trial. A hearing will be on January 23 [1991].
Dr Singh’s lawyer Miles Johnson, a former Fiji Law Society president and an outspoken critic of the new constitution, regards the case as a test of the legality of the interim government.
“We are putting the case fairly and squarely that an accused cannot be guilty of sedition if the government itself is not legitimate,” he said. The military-backed government was installed after two coups in 1987.
Three journalists also face charges on January 30 of “maliciously fabricating” a report about further protests against the constitution. Their newspaper, the Fiji Daily Post, reported a plan by University of the South Pacific-based protest groups to burn further copies of the constitution.
This is believed to be the first time any prosecutions have been brought under the vaguely worded Section 15(a) of Fiji’s Public Order Act 1976 which declares: “Any person who . . . fabricates or knowingly spreads abroad or publishes, whether by writing or by word of mouth, or otherwise, any false news or false report tending to create or foster public alarm, public anxiety or disaffection, or to result in the detriment of the public . . . shall be guilty of an offence.”
The three Post journalists — publisher Taniela Bolea, chief subeditor Robert Wendt and reporter Subash Verma — face a maximum penalty of one year in jail or a fine of F$1000 if found guilty.
News media sources in Suva say the arrests could be part of a campaign by the interim government to close down the indigenous Fijian-owned newspaper because its outspokenness has become an “irritant” to the regime.
‘Prisoners of conscience’
A report to the human rights group Amnesty International has warned that the accused activists and journalists would be considered “prisoners of conscience” if found guilty and jailed.
“We are certainly keen to protect human rights on our doorstep,” Amnesty’s New Zealand executive director, Colin Chiles, said. Amnesty considers the so-called “Constitution 10” have been charged over the nonviolent exercise of their constitutionally guaranteed rights to freedom of expression, assembly and association.
Interviewed by phone in Canberra, Dr Singh said he had no regrets about the symbolic burning of the new republican Fiji constitution at a protest rally during the Hindu festival of Diwali on October 13.
“It won’t even burn,” one of the about 100 protesters shouted at the time amid cries of “Azadi” (freedom). The burning incident sparked of the kidnapping.
“It was a spontaneous event, but we’re not apologising for it,” Dr Singh said. “We have a right to freely express our views against the racial discrimination of the constitution.”
The adductors drove Dr Singh to the Colo-I-Suva rainforest area on the outskirts of the capital Suva where they held him for 11 hours. He alleged that he was tortured by three of the soldiers while being interrogated about his political activities.
According to an Amnesty International report, Dr Singh said his captors covered his head with a hood, looped a rope around his neck which they tied to his feet, and bound both of his hands and feet.
Burned with cigarettes
Then the kidnappers beat him on his face, chest and arms. Later, when the hood had been removed from his head, Dr Singh’s hair was roughly cut and some of it was burned with lighted cigarettes.
While his hands were still bound, his captors held them against the base of a tree and beat them repeatedly with a steel pipe as they questioned him about the identities and addresses of other protesters.
Finally freed at 8pm, Dr Singh staggered to safety. He was taken to Suva’s Colonial War Memorial Hospital where he was treated for broken bones in his hands and multiple wounds and bruises on other parts of his body.
Dr Singh has also received further treatment in Australia and is still unable to make a fist with his hands.
Amnesty twice wrote to the interim Prime Minister, Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, on October 24 and 29 expressing concern about the kidnapping and torture of Dr Singh. However, the regime replied there was “no evidence to suggest the involvement of police or military personnel”.
With his second response, on October 30, the regime confirmed that a police investigation had been launched immediately after the abduction. But it made no mention of the arrest of five soldiers — a captain and four corporals — on the same day.
The soldiers, including Captain Sotia Ponijiase, who had reportedly received Special Air Service training in Britain and New Zealand, pleaded guilty to abduction and grievious bodily harm charges. On November 22 they were given one year suspended jail sentences and fined $170 each.
Counter Revolutionary Warfare Unit accused
Adi Kuini Bavadra, leader of the Fiji Labour Party-led Coalition, accused the Fiji military’s Counter Revolutionary Warfare Unit with having organised the abduction.
Condemning the abduction and the torture, the Daily Post also protested over the arrest of its journalists involved in the affair.
The newspaper said the arrests seriously challenged the freedom of the press. “The worrying thought that emerges here is if the police action is the possible start of suppression of this freedom . . . While the Post men were in custody, the real culprits (burners of the constitution and Dr Singh’s bashers) were still at large.
“Someone appears to be barking up the wrong tree.”
Dr Singh is under no illusions. He believes he was driven to take part in the constitution protest because freedom of speech is stifled under the regime and the news media operates under conditions of strict self-censorship.
“The Daily Post has been the bravest of the media and the consequences are upon it now,” he said. “We have been totally frustrated by our lack of freedom of expression.”
‘Behave or else’
Since the constitution burning and the abduction, the regime has clamped down even harder.
“After I was tortured, the military visited the newspaper offices and seized pictures that showed me with my injuries. The staff were told in effect to behave or else.”
Dr Singh condemns the atmosphere of racial hatred and animosity encouraged by the regime. He says he now feels like a marked man for daring to speak out.
“The worst thing about it is that things have got so worked up that I might be attacked in the street by ordinary people who recognise my picture in the paper.”
This article was first published by New Zealand’s The Dominion, 18 December 1990. An expanded account of human rights violations in post-coup Fiji was published in David Robie’s 2014 book Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Hum Rights in the Pacific (Little Island Press). In 1991, Dr Anirudh Singh wrote a book about his ordeal called Silent Warriors. He sued the five soldiers who abducted him and the Fiji Attorney-General and after a 13-year delay, on 1 November 2006, the High Court of Fiji ruled in his favour.
The full Fiji “tortured academic” article in The Dominion, 18 December 1990.
New Zealanders played a critical part in a flash-point that ignited a guerilla war threatening the economy and stability of Papuas New Guinea. David Robie examines the New Zealand connection and the conflict centred on Bougainville island – a far-flung and troubled part of Papua New Guinea.
By David Robie in Sunday Magazine
Martin Ward: “The truth is that there is an environmental mess.”
It is a bitter, stormy meeting at the Bougainville township of Panguna — site of one of the world’s largest open-cut copper mines. Finally, Francis Ona, soon to be a rebel leader with a $380,000 price tag on his head, marches up to Wellington environmentalist Martin Ward. he thusts his face menacingly in front of Ward and points to the altar crucifix. “Em big fella kilim i dai,” he hisses in Tok Pisin. “Mipela nogat likem report bilong yu, mipela kilim yu dai.” Ona draws his finger across his throat in case Ward misses the point.
Blood on their Banner (Zed Books/Pluto Press edition), 1989
“The South Pacific is no longer pacific. Nationalist struggles against colonialism, indigenous claims for sovereignty, and superpower rivalry have turned it into a zone of growing tension. David Robie, a New Zealand journalist covering the region for the past decade, provides a devastating expose of the political forces which have shaken the South Pacific over the past few years.
“He also argues that the policies of France, Indonesia and the United States pose the gravest threat to the stability of the region.
“The author describes the liberation struggle of New Caledonia’s Kanaks to end French rule; the fate of President Remeliik of Belau, an island with the world’s first nuclear-free constitution; the pressures on Vanuatu as a result of its opposition to nuclear weapons; Indonesia’s two “forgotten wars” in East Timor and West Papua; and the coup which has divided the two communities of Fiji.
“Graphic accounts include the massacres of Hienghène and Ouvéa, the siege of Thio and the assassination of Ëloi Machoro – regarded by some as the Che Guevara of the South Pacific.” – Zed Books, London, United Kingdom
Blood on Their Banner (Malaya Books edition, Philippines), 1990
David Robie is a New Zealand author, journalist and media educator specialising in Asia-Pacific affairs. He is founding director of the AUT Pacific Media Centre and editor of Pacific Scoop, Asia Pacific Report, Pacific Media Watch and PMC Online.
He was on board the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior bombed by French secret agents in 1985 and his book about that fateful voyage to the Marshall Islands is called Eyes of Fire.
