Fiji news media . . . facing relentless pressures with the draconian Media Act in the background. Image: Islands Business/The Fiji Times
By Samisoni Pareti in Suva
With the trial of three newspaper executives underway in Fiji in May on charges of sedition, the assault of a newspaper journalist in Papua New Guinea, the removal of the general manager and her news manager at the Tonga Broadcasting Commission and the re-introduction of libel laws in Samoa, press freedom is coming under severe attacks in all regions of the Pacific.
A survey by Islands Business reveal disturbing signs to silence or control the work of independent and free media in the islands, with most of these attacks orchestrated by public agencies.
Equally alarming is the absence of a public outcry or condemnation from the media and the general public alike.
Long-time Pacific media commentator and journalist now director of the Auckland-based Pacific Media Centre and convenor of Pacific Media Watch, Professor David Robie believes media freedom in the Pacific has never been as under severe stress as it is today.
“Ironically, in this digital era of social media and with a multitude of alternative and independent information sources and platforms available, mainstream media has faced a decline in media freedom,” he told Islands Business.
Notably two of the Pacific countries with the largest and strongest media industries, Fiji and Papua New Guinea, have faced a steady “chilling” in their discourse.
Increasingly in PNG, for example, the public and journalists themselves are turning to independent and respected blogs for trusted and “real” information, he says.
“There is a mainstream media silence on many issues, especially the under-reporting of social justice issues, the plight of refugees after closure of the Manus detention centre, climate change, and West Papua.”
Samisoni Pareti is an Islands Business editor. Republished with permission.
Media freedom in Fiji . . . Professor david Robie says media freedom in the Pacific has never been under such severe stress as it is today. Image: The Fiji Times/Islands Business
By Samisoni Pareti in Suva
With the trial of three newspaper executives underway in Fiji in May on charges of sedition, the assault of a newspaper journalist in Papua New Guinea, the removal of the general manager and her news manager at the Tonga Broadcasting Commission and the re-introduction of libel laws in Samoa, press freedom is coming under severe attacks in all regions of the Pacific.
A survey by Islands Business reveals disturbing signs to silence or control the work of independent and free media in the islands, with most of these attacks orchestrated by public agencies. Equally alarming is the absence of a public outcry or condemnation from the media and the general public alike.
Long-time Pacific media commentator and journalist, now director of the Auckland-based Pacific Media Centre and convenor of Pacific Media Watch, Professor David Robie believes media freedom in the Pacific has never been under such severe stress as it is today.
“Ironically, in this digital era of social media and with a multitude of alternative and independent information sources and platforms available, mainstream media has faced a decline in media freedom,” he says.
“Notably two of the Pacific countries with the largest and strongest media industries,Fiji and Papua New Guinea, have faced a steady ‘chilling’ in their discourse. Increasingly in PNG, for example, the public and journalists themselves are turning to independent and respected blogs for trusted and ‘real’ information.
“There is a mainstream media silence on many issues, especially the under-reporting of social justice issues, the plight of refugees after closure of the Manus detention centre, climate change, and West Papua.”
Facebook has censored a West Papuan image by a Vanuatu-based photojournalist for the second time in less than four days — this time “within one minute” after the photograph was posted.
Last weekend, a two-page feature spread authored by him about a perceived threat to the region’s stability because of Indonesian political influence in the Melanesian Spearhead Group was published by the Vanuatu Daily Post under the headline “Caught in a pincer”.
The Facebook “censored” Ben Bohane image after a “facelift” by the Vanuatu Daily Post.
The article was subsequently republished in Asia Pacific Report on Monday under the headline “China? No, let’s face the elephant in the Pacific room”,
Facebook alerts on the Vanuatu Daily Post, Asia Pacific Report, Pacific Media Centre along with Ben Bohane and PMC director Professor David Robie’s newsfeeds were removed with blocks saying the featured image had “violated community standards”.
The Bohane image taken in 1995 showed an armed OPM (Free West Papua) guerilla and several other men wearing traditional nambas (protective sheaths).
The photo has previously appeared in The Black Islands and other outlets, and can be seen in a 2006 Bohane photoessay at Pacific Journalism Review.
Facebook ‘test’
Bohane today carried out a Facebook “test” by posting his OPM image again.
He told Pacific Media Watch that within one minute he was “notified that the content has been removed and I am now banned from posting anything on FB for 24 hours”.
Bohane wrote on his Facebook page:
“Facebook seems to be censoring West Papuan images of mine used in news stories, saying they don’t meet ‘Community Standards’ because of “nudity”.
“Either that or the Indonesian government is reporting the images to be removed because they don’t want Papuan resistance photos spread on the web.
“Memo to Facebook – this is how Papuans live! Your ‘Community Standards’ obviously don’t include Melanesian culture.
“I have sent FB messages to complain, as have some regional news media outlets, and am posting images here as a test to see if they will be removed again and the problem persists….”
The Melbourne Sunday Observer — the original newspaper of that name which campaigned against Australian involvement as a US surrogate in the Vietnam War — published photographs of the My Lai massacre in December 1969.
It was prosecuted for “obscenity” for reporting the atrocity but the charge was later dropped.
Michael Cannon was editor and David Robie chief subeditor at the time (and later the editor). The photographs were published by arrangement with Life Magazine and were later shown to Federal MPs in an attempt to change Australian government support for the war.
The photographs were published during a period when newspapers in Australia rarely published pictures of bodies, and certainly not as victims of “atrocities” by “our side”. This website has a small selection of the photographs published by the Observer.
The Sunday Observer was the springboard for the launching of Nation Review in 1970:
From David Robie’s Instagram account, 16 March 2018:
One of the most horrendous acts of the Vietnam War remembered today — the My Lai massacre on 16 March 1968. US troops slaughtered 504 unarmed civilians in Son My village. Many women were gang raped and their mutilated bodies dumped on the roadside and in the ricefields. Covered up by the US authorities for a year. Charges finally laid against 26 soldiers. Only one, Lieutenant William Calley, was sentenced to life, but he only served 3 years under house arrest.
I was chief subeditor of the Melbourne Sunday Observer at the time and we published several of witness military photographer Ron Haeberle’s photos as evidence.
The War You Don’t See, a documentary by John Pilger Video:FilmIsNow
My Lai was one of nine hamlets clustered near the village of Song My, a name sometimes used also for the hamlets. GIs called the area “Pinkville” because it was coloured rose on their military maps and because the area had long been known as Viet Cong territory.
From David Robie’s photojournalism slide show/lecture in 2011. The “Bloodbath” image is the cover of the Sunday Observer reportage of the exposé, 14 December 1969.
The action at My Lai received only a passing mention at the weekly Saigon briefing in March of 1968. Elements of an American division had made contact with the enemy near Quang Ngai city and had killed 128 Viet Cong. There were a few rumours of civilian deaths, but when the US Army looked into them — a month after the incident — it found nothing to warrant disciplinary measures.
The matter might have ended there except for a former GI, Ron Ridenhour, now a Californian university student. After hearing about My Lai from former comrades, he wrote letters to congressmen warning that “something dark and bloody” had taken place.
Now an officer, Lieutenant William Calley, has been charged with murder of “an unknown number of Oriental human beings” at My Lai, and 24 other men of C Company, First Battalion, 20th Infantry, are under investigation. The world is demanding to know what happened at My Lai, who ordered it, and whether or not US troops have committed similar acts in Vietnam.
From the same lecture and workshop.
Because of the court-martial, the Army will say little. The South Vietnamese government, which has conducted its own investigation, says that My Lai was “an act of war” and that any talk of atrocities is just Viet Cong propaganda.
This is not true.
The pictures published in this newspaper by Ronald Haeberle, an Army photographer who covered the massacre, and reports in the past three weeks confirm a story of indisputable horror — the deliberate slaughter of old men, women, children and babies.
Eyewitness reports indicate that the American troops encountered little — if any — hostile fire, found virtually no enemy soldiers in the village and suffered only one casualty — a self-inflicted wound. The people of My Lai were simply gunned down.
‘Frightful violation’
“The My Lai massacre represented a frightful violation of the principle of humaneness. To tell as much of the truth as was then available about that violation, and to make sure at the same time that the accused Lieutenant William Calley would be treated justly, required extraordinary care by a journalist. More than a mere set of court-martial papers needed to be inspected. Calley needed to be found and interviewed.
“In acting on that judgement, journalist Seymour Hersh used many standard reportorial techniques and several ingenious ones. Passive deception, allowing persons on the military base [Fort Benning] to make their own most natural inference as to his identity, could be defended so long as it did no avoidable harm — that is, so long as it did not risk injustice or unfairness to innocents caught up in Hersh’s quest for Calley.
“can be argued that Hersh allowed his key source, Jerry, to make his own decision to obtain Calley’s file. But, in fact, Hersh appears to have actively created a situation in which Jerry, already a busted private, risked further penalty to himself unless he cooperated. Having made an authoritative entrance demanding Jerry’s presence, Hersh met with Jerry outside, ‘and told him what I wanted’.”
On the ethical dilemmas involved in Hersh’s investigation to gain access to Calley’s file and to expose the truth about the massacre, from Edmund Lambeth‘s Committed Journalism: An Ethic for the Profession, Indiana University Press, 1986, 1992.
Helicopter pilot intervened for victims
The horror only began to die down when army helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson Jr landed between the soldiers and the villagers, threatening to fire at the troops. After taking off again, the pilot witnessed soldiers chasing civilians and landed the helicopter between them. He evacuated the villagers and returned to the scene to search for survivors. Thompson also told his superiors about the massacre, and the order was sent back to “knock off the killing”.
“After the shooting was over, the soldiers went and were eating their lunch, really literally next to the ditch, next to the bodies. And that’s how disconnected you get,” Seymour Hersh, the investigative reporter who uncovered the story, said on Democracy Now.
Despite Thompson filing a report, a military investigation found there had been no massacre. Captain Ernest Medina, who had ordered the soldiers to be aggressive in their operations, told superiors the unit had killed lots of VC fighters.
When Commodore (now rear admiral retired and an elected prime minister) Voreqe Bainimarama staged Fiji’s fourth “coup to end all coups” on 5 December 2006, it was widely misunderstood, misinterpreted and misrepresented by a legion of politicians, foreign affairs officials, journalists and even some historians.
A chorus of voices continually argued for the restoration of “democracy” – not only the flawed version of democracy that had persisted in various forms since independence from colonial Britain in 1970, but specifically the arguably illegal and unconstitutional government of merchant banker Laisenia Qarase that had been installed on the coattails of the third (attempted) coup in 2000.
Yet in spite of superficial appearances, Bainimarama’s 2006 coup contrasted sharply with its predecessors.
Bainimarama attempted to dodge the mistakes made by Sitiveni Rabuka after he carried out both of Fiji’s first two coups in 1987 while retaining the structures of power.
Instead, notes New Zealand historian Robbie Robertson who lived in Fiji for many years, Bainimarama “began to transform elements of Fiji: Taukei deference to tradition, the provision of golden eggs to sustain the old [chiefly] elite, the power enjoyed by the media and judiciary, rural neglect and infrastructural inertia” (p. 314). But that wasn’t all.
[H]e brazenly navigated international hostility to his illegal regime. Then, having accepted an independent process for developing a new constitution, he rejected its outcome, fearing it threatened his hold on power and would restore much of what he had undone. (Ibid.)
Bainimarama reset electoral rules, abolished communalism in order to pull the rug from under the old chiefly elite, and provided the first non-communal foundation for voting in Fiji.
Landslide victory
Then he was voted in as legal prime minister of Fiji with an overwhelming personal majority and a landslide victory for his fledgling FijiFirst Party in September 2014. He left his critics in Australia and New Zealand floundering in his wake.
Robertson is well-qualified to write this well-timed book, The General’s Goose: Fiji’s Tale of Contemporary Misadventure, with Bainimarama due to be tested again this year with another election. He is a former history lecturer at the Suva-based regional University of the South Pacific at the time of Rabuka’s original coups (when I first met him).
He and his journalist wife Akosita Tamanisau wrote a definitive account of the 1987 events and the ousting of Dr Timoci Bavadra’s visionary and multiracial Fiji Labour Party-led government, Fiji: Shattered Coups (1988), ultimately leading to his expulsion from Fiji by the Rabuka regime. He also followed this up with Government by the Gun (2001) on the 2000 coup, and other titles.
Robertson later returned to Fiji as professor of Development Studies at USP and he has also been professor and head of Arts and Social Sciences at James Cook University in Townsville, Queensland, as well as holding posts at La Trobe University, the Australian National University and the University of Otago.
He has published widely on globalisation. He is thus able to bring a unique perspective on Fiji over three decades and is currently professor and dean of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne.
Since 2006, Fiji has slipped steadily away from Australian and New Zealand influence, as outlined by Robertson. However, this is a state of affairs blamed by Bainimarama on Canberra and Wellington for their failed and blind policies.
Ever since the 2014 election, Bainimarama has maintained a “hardline” on the Pacific’s political architecture through his Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) alternative to the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), and on the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) Plus trade deal.
‘Turned their backs’
While in Brisbane for an international conference in 2015, Bainimarama took the opportunity to remind his audience that Australia and New Zealand “as traditional friends had turned their backs on Fiji”. He added:
How much sooner we might have been able to return Fiji to parliamentary rule if we hadn’t expended so much effort on simply surviving … defending the status quo in Fiji was indefensible, intellectually and morally (p. 294).
For the first time in Fiji’s history, Bainimarama steered the country closer to a “standard model of liberal democracy” and away from the British colonial and race-based legacy.
“Government still remained the familiar goose,” writes Robertson, “but this time, its golden eggs were distributed more evenly than before”. The author attributes this to “bypassing chiefly hands” for tribal land lease monies, through welfare and educational programmes no longer race-bound, and through bold rural public road, water and electrification projects.
Admittedly, argues Robertson, like Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara (Fiji’s prime minister at independence and later president), Rabuka and Qarase, “Bainimarama had cronies and the military continues to benefit excessively from his ascendancy”. Nevertheless, Bainimarama’s “outstanding controversial achievement remains undoubtedly his rebooting of Fiji’s operating system in 2013”.
Coup 3 front man George Speight . . . jailed for treason. Image: Mai Life
Robertson’s scholarship is meticulous and drawn from an impressive range of sources, including his own work over more than three decades. One of the features of his latest book are his analysis of former British SAS Warrant Officer Lisoni Ligairi and the role of the First Meridian Squadron (renamed in 1999 from the “coup proof” Counter Revolutionary Warfare Unit – CRWU), and the “public face” of Coup 3, businessman George Speight, now serving a life sentence in prison for treason.
His reflections on and interpretations of the Republic of Fiji Military Forces Board of Inquiry (known as BoI) into the May 2000 coup are also extremely valuable. Much of this has never before been available in an annotated and tested published form, although it is available as full transcripts on the “Truth for Fiji” website.
‘Overlapping conspiracies’
As Robertson recalls, by mid-May, “there were many overlapping conspiracies afoot … Within the kava-infused wheels within wheels, coup whispers gained volume”. Ligairi’s role was pivotal but BoI put most of the blame for the coup on the RFMF for “allowing” one man so much power, especially one it considered ill-equipped to be a director and planner’ (p. 140).
The BoI testimony about the November 2000 CRWU mutiny before Bainimarama escaped with his life through a cassava patch, also fed into Robertson’s account, although he admits Colonel Jone Baledrokadroka’s ANU doctoral thesis is the best account on the topic, “Sacred King and Warrior Chief: The role of the military in Fiji politics”.
It was a bloody and confused affair, led by the once loyal [Captain Shane] Stevens, 40 CRWU soldiers, many reportedly intoxicated, seized weapons and took over the Officers Mess, Bainimarama’s office and administration complex, the national operations centre and the armoury in the early afternoon. They wanted hostages; above all they wanted Bainimarama. (p. 164)
The book is divided into four lengthy chapters plus an Introduction and Conclusion – 1. The Challenge of Inheritance about the flawed colonial legacy, 2. The Great Turning on Rabuka’s 1987 coups and the Taukei indigenous supremacy constitution, 3. Redux: The Season for Coups on Speight’s attempted (and partially successful) 2000 coup, and 4. Plus ça Change …? on Bainimarama’s political “reset”. (The Bainimarama success in outflanking his Pacific critics is perhaps best represented by his diplomatic success in co-hosting the “Pacific” global climate change summit in Bonn in 2017.)
One drawback from a journalism perspective is the less than compelling assessment of the role of the media over the period, considering the various controversies that dogged each coup, especially the Speight one when accusations were made against some journalists as having been too close to the coup makers.
One of Fiji’s best journalists and editors, arguably the outstanding investigative reporter of his era, Jo Nata, publisher of the Weekender, sided with Speight as a “media minder” and was jailed for treason.
However, while Robertson in several places acknowledges Nata’s place in Fiji as a journalist, there is no real examination of his role as journalist-turned-coup-propagandist. This ought to be a case study.
Robertson noted how Nata’s Weekender exposed “morality issues” in Rabuka’s cabinet in 1994 without naming names. The Review news and business magazine followed up with a full report in the April edition that year, naming a prominent female journalist who was sleeping with the post-coup prime minister, produced a love child and who still works for The Fiji Times today (p. 118).
Nata then promised a special issue on the 21 women Rabuka had had affairs with since stepping down from the military. However, after Police Commissioner Isikia Savua spoke to him, the issue never appeared. (A full account is in Pacific Journalism Review – The Review, 1994).
NBF debacle
Elsewhere in the book is an outline of the National Bank of Fiji (NBF) debacle that erupted when an audit was leaked to the media: “In fact, the press, particularly The Fiji Times and The Review, were pivotal in exposing the scandal.” Robertson added:
The Review had earlier been threatened with deregistration over its publication of Rabuka’s affair[s] in 1994; now both papers were threatened with Malaysian-style licensing laws to ensure that they remained respectful of Pacific cultural sensitivities and did not denigrate Fijian business acumen. (p. 121)
The bank collapsed in late 1995 owing more than $220 million or nearly 9 percent of Fiji’s GDP – an example of the nepotism, corruption and poor public administration that worsened in Fiji after Rabuka’s coups.
On Coup 1, Robertson recalls how apart from Rabuka’s masked soldiers inside Parliament, “other teams fanned out across the city to seize control of telecommunication power authorities, media outlets and the Government Buildings” (p. 65).
But there is little reflective detail about Rabuka’s “seduction” of the Fiji and international journalists, or how after closing down the two daily newspapers, the neocolonial Fiji Times reopened while the original Fiji Sun opted to close down rather than publish under a military-backed regime.
About Coup 3, Robertson recalls “[Speight] was articulate and comfortable with the media – too comfortable, according to some journalists. They felt that this intimate media presence ‘aided the rebel leader’s propaganda fire … gave him political fuel’. They were not alone’ (p. 154) (see Robie, 2001).
On the introduction of the 2010 Fiji Media Industry Development Decree, which still casts a shadow over the country and is mainly responsible for the lowest Pacific “partly free” rankings in the global media freedom indexes, Robertson notes how it was “Singapore-inspired”. The decree “came out in early April 2010 for discussion and mandated that all media organisations had to be 90 percent locally owned. The implication for the News Corporation Fiji Times and for the 51 percent Australian-owned Daily Post were obvious” (p. 254).
The Fiji Times was bought by Mahendra Patel, long-standing director and owner of the Motibhai trading group. (He was later jailed for a year for “abuse of office” while chair of Post Fiji.) The Daily Post was closed down.
Facing a long history of harassment by various post-coup administrations (including a $100,000 fine in January 2009 for publishing a letter describing the judiciary as corrupt, and deportations of publishers), The Fiji Times is heading into this year’s elections facing a trial for alleged “sedition” confronting the newspaper.
In spite of my criticism of limitations on media content, The General’s Goose is an excellent book and should be mandatory background reading for any journalist covering South Pacific affairs, especially those likely to be involved in coverage of this year’s general election in Fiji.
References
Baledrokadroka, J. (2012). The sacred king and warrior chief: The role of the military in Fiji politics. Unpublished doctoral thesis. Canberra: Australian National University.
Conflict, Custom and Conscience ... the front cover. Image: Pacific Journalism Review
Edited by Jim Marbrook, Del Abcede, Natalie Robertson and David Robie
A group of Melanesian women march behind an anti-mining “NO BCL, NO MINING” banner, across a small field in the now-autonomous region of Bougainville. Their protest is ostensibly unseen by the rest of the world. Their protest efforts are local, gender-specific, indigenous, and part of a wider movement to stop any production on the Panguna copper mine. This conflict claimed an estimated 10,000 lives in the 1990s civil war.
This photograph is one of the many that we have selected to mark the 10th anniversary of the Pacific Media Centre in Auckland University of Technology’s School of Communication Studies.
Fifteen photojournalists and photographers who have worked with the Pacific Media Centre for the past decade have donated their images for this book project. Although the book is not actually for sale, it has been produced as a limited edition for those who have contributed to the PMC. It is also available in libraries.
Published by the Pacific Media Centre, Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, 177 pages
State-backed terrorism as exemplified by the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior, the Amsterdam-registered flagship of the Greenpeace environmental movement, on 10 July 1985 in New Zealand, and the assassination of pro-independence leaders and, allegedly, at least one journalist in French Pacific territories by secret agents or military officers in subsequent years, has left a legacy of insecurity.
In July 2015, Aotearoa New Zealand marked the 30th anniversary of the bombing in a more subdued manner than a decade earlier. While there was considerable focus on a rehashing of the French spy drama from a narrow “how we covered it” perspective, there was little introspection or reflection on broader issues of regional security.
For example, the sabotage of the environmental flagship was not addressed in the wider context of nuclear-free and independence movements active in New Caledonia, New Zealand’s near Pacific neighbour, or of nuclear refugees such as those from Rongelap Atoll, from where the Rainbow Warrior had relocated an entire community to a safer environment following United States nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands.
At the time of the second anniversary, Le Monde exposed the responsibility of President François Mitterrand for Opération Satanique and later revealed much of the detail about the so-called “third team” of bombers.
This paper examines the broader context of the bombing in the Pacific geopolitical challenges of the time and the legacy for the region, from a journalist’s perspective, as the region has moved from the insecurity of nuclear refugees to that of climate change refugees, or climate-forced migrants.
As we conclude the month of June 2017, it would be remiss of me not to draw our attention to our neighbour New Zealand, which yesterday broke a 14-year drought on the water to convincingly win the oldest trophy in international sport — the America’s Cup.
However, the emergence of New Zealand as a yachting superpower is not the only reason it makes history this month. This year marks the 30th anniversary of Aotearoa becoming a “nuclear-free” country when the NZ Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act came into force on 8 June 1987, the day we globally mark as World Ocean’s Day.
Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre, believes activist movements in New Zealand through the 1980s helped spark the change needed for the country’s nuclear-free stance in the Pacific.
“What pushed NZ in the direction it did with the nuclear-free approach was the masses of activism, of just ordinary people, people getting out on their boats on Auckland harbour for example.”
“The real ‘David’ were the ordinary people of New Zealand who exerted extraordinary pressure on the government to deliver. The barrages of letters from citizens, constant lobbying by peace campaigners, local councils … declaring themselves nuclear-free, the door-knocking petitioners and, of course, the spectacular protests.”
1979 — The Republic of Palau (Belau) adopted a nuclear-free Constitution and was forced by the US to hold a further 10 referenda in attempts to undermine the document. The “father” of the Constitution, President Haruo Remeliik, was assassinated on June 30, 1985. In the end, the people of Belau were ironically forced to vote to drop their nuclear-free status for “economic survival” a month after New Zealand’s Bill became law;
1980 — The newly independent nation of Vanuatu, formerly the New Hebrides, also adopted a nuclear-free Constitution and banned nuclear ships from its territorial waters. The country was led by the inspirational Father Walter Lini, who linked nuclear weapons with colonialism;
1983 — Tahiti’s airport suburb of Fa’aa led by mayor Oscar Temaru, who later became president of French-occupied Polynesia several times, declared itself nuclear-free; and
1987 — The first Fiji Labour Party government led by Dr Timoci Bavadra also planned to bring in a nuclear-free law but was deposed at gunpoint in the first military coup of Lieutenant-Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka in May that year.
Why is this 30th anniversary of a nuclear-free NZ and the Pacific struggle to also be nuclear-free important today?
According to ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), nine countries together possess around 15,000 nuclear weapons. The US and Russia maintain roughly 1800 of their nuclear weapons on high-alert status — ready to be launched within minutes of a warning.
Many times more powerful
Most are many times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. A single nuclear warhead detonated on a large city could kill millions of people with the effects persisting for decades.
The failure of the nuclear powers to disarm has heightened the risk of other countries acquiring nuclear weapons. The only guarantee against the spread and use of nuclear weapons is to eliminate them without delay. Although the leaders of some nuclear-armed nations have expressed their vision for a nuclear-weapon-free world, they have failed to develop any detailed plans to eliminate their arsenals and are modernising them.
Part of Gil Hanly and John Miller’s photo exhibition in Devonport this month of anti-nuclear coummunity activism, Peace Squadron flotillas and the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. Image: David Robie/PMC
Someone, who participated in the early Pacific-wide protest movement against nuclear weapons testing and militarisation of the Pacific region, Fiji-based Vanessa Griffen says: “In the Pacific, we have collectively experienced the known and unknown consequences of nuclear weapons use, the push by non-nuclear states for a ban on nuclear weapons is the only sensible, humane and responsible course of action to take.
Griffen became aware of the environmental and genetic impacts of radioactivity from French nuclear weapons testing in French Polynesia as a student at the University of the South Pacific. She joined the anti-nuclear movement ATOM (Against Testing on Moruroa) and helped form the early Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) network.
Concurrently, she was part of the Pacific women’s movement which was always against nuclear weapons testing and for a peaceful Pacific.
She has been a representative of FemLINKPacific, a partner member of ICAN and the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC).
Plea to use statehood
“Pacific Island states, with an unusually high experiential qualification for speaking up for nuclear disarmament, are a significant number in the United Nations and should use their statehood collectively and effectively on this global issue of nuclear disarmament,” she said.
From 1946 to 1958, the US conducted 67 atomic and hydrogen bomb tests at Bikini and Enewetak atolls in the Marshall Islands, accounting for 32 percent of all US atmospheric tests. In the 1960s, there were 25 further US tests at Christmas (Kiritimati) Island and nine at Johnston (Kalama) Atoll.
The UK tested nuclear weapons in Australia and its Pacific colonies in the 1950s. Starting in 1952, there were 12 atmospheric tests at the Monte Bello Islands, Maralinga and Emu Field in Australia (1952-57).
There were also more than 600 “minor” trials, such as the testing of bomb components and the burning of plutonium, uranium and other nuclear materials, conducted at Maralinga.
Under “Operation Grapple”, the British Government conducted another nine atomic and hydrogen bomb tests at Kiritimati and Malden islands in the central Pacific from 1957 to 1958.
After conducting four atmospheric tests at Reggane (1960-61) and 13 underground tests at In Eker (1961-6) in the Sahara desert of Algeria, France established its Pacific nuclear test centre in French Polynesia.
For 30 years between 1966 and 1996, France conducted 193 atmospheric and underground nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls.
Fragile ecology
Their impact on the fragile ecology of the region and the health and mental wellbeing of its peoples has been profound and long-lasting. Pacific Islanders continue to experience epidemics of cancers, chronic diseases and congenital abnormalities as a result of the radioactive fallout that blanketed their homes and the vast Pacific Ocean, upon which they depend for their livelihoods.
As you read this, the United Nations is convening negotiations in 2017 on “a legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading towards their total elimination”. This new international agreement will place nuclear weapons on the same legal footing as other weapons of mass destruction, which have long been outlawed.
The negotiations began at UN headquarters in New York for one week in March and will continue from June 15 to July 7, with governments, international organisations and civil society participating.
Despite being the most destructive, inhumane weapons ever invented, nuclear weapons are the only “weapons of mass destruction” that are not yet banned under international law. (Chemical and biological weapons are both banned internationally.)
In December 2016, the UN General Assembly took action to address this crucial gap, voting to begin negotiations in 2017 for a treaty to ban nuclear weapons.
Pacific Island governments have joined the historic talks at the United Nations that should result in an international treaty that bans nuclear weapons as the second, and possibly final round of negotiations aims to have a final text on a treaty adopted in early July.
Reverend James Bhagwan is an ordained Methodist minister and a citizen journalist. He contributes the regular “Off The Wall” column to The Fiji Times and this article is republished with permission. The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Methodist Church in Fiji or the newspaper.
Indonesian hospitality was given a rave notice last week for hosting World Press Freedom Day 2017, but it was also given a huge black mark for its “gagging” of free discussion over West Papua violations.
Four days before the WPFD event got under way, prominent Papuan journalist Victor Mambor had warned in the New Internationalist that Indonesian double standards had imposed a silence over West Papua.
Even a Papuan protest outside the Jakarta Conference Centre venue was kept at the margins, ensuring most of the 1300 journalists, media academics and communication policy makers from 90 countries were unaware of the shocking press and human rights violations that continue almost daily in the Melanesian provinces of Papua and West Papua (collectively known as West Papua).
Al Jazeera’s coverage by Step Vaessen of the Papuan protest at WPFD2017 in Jakarta.
Brutal attack on Yance Wenda
This was in spite of the brutal attack by police on Yance Wenda, a photographer for the Papuan news website Jubi, on the eve of the WPFD2017.
West Papuan journalist Yance Wenda documents his abuse at the hands of police on the eve of World Press Freedom Day after covering a peaceful demonstration in Sentani. Image: Asia Pacific Report/FWPC
Wenda was arrested and beaten by police while covering a peaceful demonstration in support of a proposed United Nations referendum on self-determination in Sentani, a suburb of Jayapura, West Papua’s largest city and regional capital.
As director of the Pacific Media Centre taking part in the Southeast Asian Consultative Roundtable on a Special Mechanism for the Protection of Safety of Journalists, I raised a plenary question about the “silence” over West Papua violations and got an informative answer from Atnike Sigiro of Forum Asia.
But then back to the silence.
Impressive ‘side forum’ on Papua
I was privileged to be one of the three main speakers at the public “side forum” on a “Free Press in West Papua” seminar that night along with Victor Mambor, chief editor of Jubi and a former chair of the Papuan chapter of the Aliansi Jurnalis Independen (AJI); human rights lawyer Usman Hamid of the newly formed Amnesty International Indonesia; and moderator human rights lawyer Veronica Koman.
Pacific Media Centre’s Dr David Robie speaking at the “Free West Papua Media” seminar. Seated next to him is Indonesian human rights lawyer Veronica Koman. Photo: Titro.id
The seminar had a packed audience, including the IFJ’s media rights barrister Jim Nolan, and impressive Papuan theatre props and the bird of paradise pen logo.
During the evening, I spoke about President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo’s broken promises on West Papua and developments about independent media coverage and the success of solidarity networks, including the Pacific Media Watch freedom project.
The poster for the West Papuan seminar, including the bird of paradise with pen logo.
“Indonesia as host of WPFD wanted to convince the international community that media freedom is in fact a priority,” says Mambor.
“Unfortunately, the Indonesian government’s record does not match its rhetoric, particularly in Papua and West Papua. These two provinces [that make up the region of West Papua] have faced serious issues: restrictions are placed on foreign journalists, while violence and discrimination against Papuan journalists and bribery are common occurrences.”
The Indonesian government has claimed that 39 foreign journalists have been given permission to report in the West Papua region since President Widodo declared in May 2015 that access restrictions for foreign journalists would be lifted.
Journalists face harassment
However, research by the independent journalists union AJI shows that only 15 foreign journalists – including two New Zealand radio television crews – had been allowed into the region since then.
And many face serious obstacles or actual harassments and detentions.
Writing in the New Internationalist, France 24 journalist Cyril Payen, whose 2015 documentary Indonésie: la guerre oubliée des Papous (Papua’s Forgotten War) was condemned by Indonesian authorities and led to the journalist’s “banning”, said the president’s promise was “too good to be true”.
The French Ambassador in Jakarta was summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, says Payen.
“During the tense meeting, the diplomat was told I had ‘betrayed’ their trust and that my film was ‘biased’. And as a result, I would be denied any Indonesian visa from that day onwards.
“The president’s promises had not lasted long.”
Media human rights researcher Asep Komarudin with the Pacific Media Centre’s Dr David Robie at WPFD2017. Image: David Robie/PMC
Asep Komarudin, research coordinator of the Jakarta Legal Aid Institute for the Press (LBH Pers Jakarta), says a recent clampdown on websites raising issues of human rights violations is because the government claims that they include “separatist” content.
“We need to ensure that any restrictions meet accepted human rights standards,” he says.
Komarudin adds that websites should not be restricted unless there is a “clear, transparent” process recognised by law and carried out by an independent body -“not by the government”.
Authorities banned suarapapua.com late last year and other blocked websites include ampnews.org, infopapua.org, papuapost.com, freepapua.copm, freewestpapua.org, bennywenda.org and ulmwp.org
Papuans protest over violations at the World Press Freedom Day event in Jakarta. Photo: Titro.id
Winner of this year’s US$25,000 UNESCO Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize is Eritrean/Swedish journalist Dawit Isaak, jailed 16 years ago by Eritrean authorities without charge or trial in a crackdown against the media.
The Jakarta Declaration
In spite of the absence of any mention of West Papua, the participants at WPFD2017 adopted the Jakarta Declaration “unanimously” during the closing session.
The declaration has set down 74 articles that call for the commitment of all stakeholders to support free, independent and pluralistic media through the promotion of freedom of the press and expression in the advancement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“We see the importance of Agenda 2030 on SDGs, particularly goal 16 on promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development,” Zabrina Holmstrom of the Finland National Commission to UNESCO told the conference.
“Let’s use the adopted Jakarta Declaration preluded in the Finlandia Declaration [last year],” she said.
“We need critical minds for critical times. Stand up for your rights. There can’t be a compromise in freedom of expression.”
But that also means no compromise over West Papuan freedoms and justice.
Professor David Robie is director of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology and was present at WPFD2017 as part of the media academic stream at the conference. This is his personal view.
Dr David Robie is semi-retired professor of Pacific journalism and founding director of AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre. He is a NZ journalist who specialised in African affairs for many years, but now focuses on analysis of the Asia-Pacific region.
He is editor of Asia Pacific Report. Dr Robie is the author of 10 books and is founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review (PJR).
