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).
Blood on the Banner beat me to publication in 1989, for I had to make major changes to my original manuscript Fiji’s Racial Politics – The Coming Coup.
In the last chapter I had concluded that if the FLP-NFP Coalition [Fiji Labour Party-National Federation Party], under Dr Timoci Bavadra, win the 1987 general election, there would be ineluctable military intervention by the native Fijian dominated military. On 14 May 1987 Sitiveni Rabuka overthrew the new government.
Consequently, my original manuscript had to be drastically revised with additional chapters. It was later published by Zed Press as Fiji: Coups in Paradise – Race, Politics and Military Intervention.
Robie’s Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face, as one reviewer [John Pilger] of the book has put it, “is an extraordinary ‘secret history’ of a vast region of the world of which David Robie has been a rare expert witness”. I fully endorse the comments. The book also has a foreword by Kalafi Moala, deputy chair, Pasifika Media Association (Pasima), Nuku’alofa, Tonga.
Moala made international headlines when he was jailed in Tonga in 1996 for contempt of Parliament, together with his deputy editor, Filo ‘Akau’ola, and MP pro-democracy leader ‘Akilisi Pohiva. They were locked up for 26 days without any contact with the outside world.
But they were not forgotten. Moala recalls: “One of the main drivers behind the protest against our imprisonment was a man who at that stage I had known more by reputation than personally. He is award-winning journalist David Robie, author of nine books, journalism professor, and an analyst and Pacific news reporter for more than three decades.
Drew international attention
“Not only did he write about our story and distribute it to his network of media in the Pacific, but news agencies from outside the region picked up the stories and drew international attention…Without David’s involvement, the story and reaction to our imprisonment would not have been so widely known.”
We should not be surprised, for Robie is also a campaigner on many issues. I have always argued that an academic must also be an activist; otherwise the world will be a very dull and dangerous place.
Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face is divided into six parts, with an introduction: Trust and Transparency. Part One: Out of Africa; Part Two: Colonial legacy conflicts; Part 3: Indigenous struggles; Part Four: Forgotten wars, elusive peace; Part Five: Moruroa, mom amour; and Part Six: Media Education.
Again, in reviewing this book, I found another common connection. Robie opens the introduction by quoting a former Kenyan chief editor, George Githi, of the Daily Nation, with whom he once worked with, and who observed wryly about media freedom in developing countries:”‘For governments that fear newspapers, there is one consolation. We have known many instances where governments have taken over newspapers, but we have not known a single incident in which a newspaper has taken over a government.”
Githi was former press secretary for then President Jomo Kenyatta, founding father of Kenya. Githi’s comments stuck with Robie for a long time, and at one stage he (Robie) used the quote as a personal email signature. But, as Robie rightly reminds us, these days the notion isn’t quite so absurd.
As an example, he cites the Italian media tycoon and former Prime Minister Silivo Berlusconi, controlling shareholder in the Mediaset empire, and also mentions Mahendra “Mac” Patel, chairman and chief executive of the Motibhai Group, and owner of the Fiji Times and Herald Limited.
I mentioned the Kenya connection. I am currently engaged in several academic projects relating to Kenyan history, and have completed a book length biography of Justice Thacker, the judge who had convicted and jailed Jomo Kenyatta following the outbreak of the Mau Mau Rebellion in the 1950s.
The manuscript, based largely on Thacker’s private papers, is titled: A Portrait of Jomo Kenyatta’s Judge: Justice Ransley Samuel Thacker’s Journey to Kapenguria, 1891-1953. Before taking up the position as judge of the Kenya High Court in 1948, Thacker was Attorney-General of colonial Fiji. Naturally, Githi had been of interest to my study of Kenyatta.
‘Checks and balances’
In 1965, at the age of 29, Githi had become Daily Nation’s fourth editor-in-chief, promising this “newspaper will not flatter Kenyatta or the government” as an administration should not be allowed to have absolute power, “there must be checks and balances”. Journalists and media proprietors in Fiji should take note of Githi’s 1965 declaration.
In this review we will concentrate on Fiji, for others have reviewed Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face from different perspectives. In Part Two, Chapter Nine, Robie writes at length on Fiji: Countdown to a coup in 1987. Just before the coup, he had been one of only two New Zealand journalists in Suva reporting on the dramatic victory of the Fiji Labour Party led Coalition. (Robie was also in Fiji for the 2000 George Speight coup, then as a journalism educator leading a group of students covering the putsch).
In the book Robie asserts that most journalists covering the 1987 coups focused on an exaggerated racial divide instead of fundamental changes that had happened in Fiji to lead to the election upset — and then the military takeover. His reports, the first of a series for New Zealand’s New Outlook magazine, focused on the changing paradigms of political struggle and background to the coups.
It is also worth noting that Robie has recalled at length the beating of University of the South Pacific (USP) academic Dr Anirudh Singh in the chapter entitled “Human rights abuses in the Pacific”. Singh narrated his abduction and brutal torture by soldiers in retaliation for a protest burning of the discriminatory 1990 Constitution in his book The Silent Warriors. Robie reminds us of Singh’s harrowing ordeal by reproducing his Auckland Star (17 December 1990) article titled “They put a noose around my neck”.
In Part Six, Robie focuses on “Media Education”. Chapter 22 begins with “Shooting the messenger, 2002” where he quotes former FLP Senator ‘Atu Emberson-Bain: “So much for the free media in this country — the debate always focuses on freedom from government interference. What about freedom from the big [private sector] boys on the block with their vested interests?”
In spite of the rhetoric about governments pressuring the media in Pacific countries — yet this does happen all too frequently — Robie believes a greater threat to press freedom sometimes comes from a small clique of self-serving media veterans, many of whom are of expatriate palagi origin and who have disproportionate influence.
The now defunct Fiji Media Council also comes for criticism, and rightly so, for eagerly co-operating with two British media consultants in 1996 regarding media legislation. Robie states: “Any journalists worth their salt should be resisting any attempt by governments to hinder the media. The consultants’ report was merely an attempt by the Fiji Media Council to save its own vested interest.
‘Thin end of the wedge’
“In fact, one could argue that the industry itself opened up the thin end of the wedge by collaborating in the first place with government attempts to control media.”
Robie also reminds us that the Bainimarama regime was just as critical of the media as the ousted Qarase government. Self-censorship by the media was replaced by the longest sustained censorship regime of any Pacific country, imposed when the 1997 Constitution was abrogated at Easter 2009.
Failure by the Fiji Media Council to get its own house in order led first to a deeply flawed media “review” by Hawai’i-based former Fiji academic Dr Jim Anthony arranged by the Fiji Human Rights Commission, and then the imposition of the notorious Fiji Media Development Decree 2010. Robie points out the deportation of Fiji Times publishers Evan Hannah and Rex Gardiner and Fiji Sun’s Russell Hunter.
The end result, according to Robie: “Although the Bainimarama regime never succeeded in closing The Fiji Times in a cat-and-mouse game, as it undoubtedly wished, the government did manage to force the Australian-based owner News Limited (a Rupert Murdoch subsidiary) to sell the newspaper to the local Motibhai Group in 2010. Chief editor Netani Rika, long a thorn in the side of the regime, and deputy editor Sophie Foster were also ousted and replaced with a more compliant editorship by Fred Wesley.”
What calibre of journalists are needed in the Pacific? Robie reminds us of Shaista Shameem’s call at a USP seminar marking World Press Freedom Day (WPED) on 3 May 2002, where she wanted a higher educational standard for Pacific journalists.
In her view the region’s journalists need to know far more about history, politics, sociology, philosophy and the sciences. “Anyone can learn the technical skills of journalism — that’s the easy part. The hard part is to understand the worlds that you are writing about. My definition of a good journalist is someone with such in-depth understanding of the issues that the words, though simply written, virtually leap out from the page,” she says.
One of the problems in the region, Robie points out, is that there is virtually no in-depth reportage of the media itself. While some sections of the media attempt valiantly to ensure power is accountable, there is little reflection about the power of the media.
We could go on, and on, but we will stop here, and highly recommend that you read Robie’s timely book, for we don’t want to sppil a beautiful read for you!
Fijileaks: Lots of reviews have been published in other countries about DSMBF yet there has been a strange silence in Fiji . . . self-censorship no doubt (apart from the student press Wansolwara and a piece by then head of journalism Pat Craddock also in Wansolwara).
Victor Lal is the founding editor-in-chief of Fijileaks and former general secretary of the now defunct Journalists’ Association of Fiji. A former Fiji journalist, he is a University of Oxford-based researcher and the author of Fiji: Coups in Paradise: Race, Politics and Military Intervention (1990) and From Reporter to Refugee (1997). This review was first published by Fijileaks.
She had the most enchanting smile, even though she had lost her baby teeth. Her toothless grin turned out to be perfect for the role.
The cover photo on David Robie’s book Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face.
The five-year-old girl had her face painted with a black anti-nuclear symbol – different motifs on both her cheeks.
Beside her was a neatly sketched poster: “No nukes: Please don’t spoil my beautiful face”.
This was the scene in Port Vila’s Independence Park in 1983 during the region’s second Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific Movement conference.
It was during the heady days of nuclear-free activism with Vanuatu, the world’s newest nation only three years old and founding Prime Minister Walter Hadye Lini leading the way.
I was there that day as an independent journalist taking many photographs for my series of articles for Pacific and international media.
One person who really stood out was the little girl with the beautiful smile. But I never knew her name back then.
33 years on
Thirty-three years have passed since then and my wife, Del Abcede, and I have just visited Aneityum (“Atomic”) Island in Vanuatu this week to meet that girl – June Keitadi and her family.
She is now June Warigini, mother of three, grandmother and a Salvation Army volunteer living on her home island. And she still has that stunning smile.
Not only June, her mother Annie Keitadi is featured there too. Her father, Jack Keitadi, was deputy curator of the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta at the time and he later became curator.
It was a delight and a privilege for Del and me to be able to visit the family on Aneityum and to be treated to a “royal” welcome by the community and tribe.
June remembers that day in 1983 really well. It left a deep impression on her in later life.
“They wanted someone young who could go on their behalf to the French Embassy and present a petition calling on France to halt its nuclear tests in the Pacific – so they chose me,” she recalls.
Symbolic of N-ravages
“But the ambassador left in a hurry out the back. I don’t know why he was afraid of a little girl.”
She remembers her toothless smile was regarded as symbolic of the ravages of nuclear testing in the Pacific, not only by France, but also the United States and Britain.
Faced with persistent protests in the Pacific, France eventually ended all nuclear testing in 1996, thirteen years after that rally. But the campaign for full compensation for the victims of nuclear testing continues.
June feels that her experience at that young age helped give her an inner strength for the challenges of life today and inspiring her in her desire to help others in her church work.
Del Abcede and David Robie in ceremonial headdress – “usually reserved for chiefs” – at the welcome feast on Aneityum Island. Image: Café Pacific
Ironically, both Del and I met her by chance on Christmas Day at the end of last year, but had no idea at that time of her connection with my book.
While visiting Aneityum for a day, we shared in an “olden days” traditional food and customs exposure in a model 18th century village on the island.
When we eventually discovered her identity – after my appeals on my blog Café Pacific and an NFIP network had failed and Vanuatu Daily Digest came to the rescue earlier this year – and we saw photographs of her, my wife exclaimed:
“That’s her, the June we have met.”
We realised that the guide “June” we had met that day on the island was indeed June Keitadi now Warigini.
Idyllic island
Aneityum, the southernmost island in Vanuatu, currently has a population of 1740. It is not part of Vanuatu’s electricity grid and islanders rely on solar power. The island has no cars, or even a road.
The air connection is only two return flights a week from the Tafea provincial capital on Tanna. There is also no doctor, although a dispensary is now operating with two nurses and a midwife.
On the other hand, for visitors like ourselves, island life seems idyllic, a byword for “paradise”.
Aneityum has a wonderful healthy lifestyle for youngsters, remote from the world’s conflicts and problems.
There are three primary schools and a boarding secondary school – one that attracts students from other outer islands whose parents want an education where the traditional way of life is important and free from the urban ills of Port Vila.
June is assistant bursar at Teruja secondary school.
She tells a delightful story about a recent excursion for students from Aneityum who went on a “field trip” adventure by island cargo ship to Tanna to visit the famous Mt Yasur volcano.
The island’s micro economy is self-sustaining and is augmented by occasional cruise ship visits and tourism days on Mystery Island. It appears that Aneityum is remote from government services or assistance and the support of cruise shipping companies, such as P&O, is crucial for the islanders.
University of Papua New Guinea's Emily Matasororo ... in the background, images of heavily armed police shortly before they opened fire on peaceful students. Image:" Del Abcede/APR
Surprising that a conference involving some of the brightest minds in journalism education from around the world should be ignored by New Zealand’s local media.
The range of diversity alone at the Auckland University of Technology hosted event was appealing, but it was the heady mix of ideas and contributions that offered an inspiring backdrop.
Topics included strategies for teaching journalism for mobile platforms — the latest techniques; “de-westernising” journalism education in an era of new media genres; transmedia storytelling; teaching hospitals; twittering, facebooking and snapchat — digital media under the periscope; new views on distance learning, and 21st century ethical issues in journalism are just a representative sample of what was on offer.
Keynote speakers included Divina Frau-Meigs (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) with a riveting account on how “powerful journalism” makes “prime ministers jump”, the Center of Public Integrity’s Peter Bale (a New Zealander) on the need to defend press freedom, and Tongan newspaper publisher and broadcaster who turned “inclusivity” on its head with an inspiring “include us” appeal from the Pacific,”where we live in the biggest continent on planet Earth”.
But for me, the most moving message of all came not from those who spoke about “reporting dangerously” (such as Simon Cottle) or the very future of journalism, but from a young quietly spoken Papua New Guinean woman who has “lived” through a freedom of speech and the press struggle while facing live bullets.
University of Papua New Guinea’s Emily Matasororo … background image of PNG police attacking university students. Image: Del Abcede/APR
Emily Matasororo, leader of the Journalism Strand at the University of Papua New Guinea, was on campus that fateful day last month (June 8) when heavily armed PNG police in camouflage fatigues opened fire with tear gas and live rounds on the peaceful students. She was actually in the crowd fired on.
Emily’s testimony
Matasororo gave her testimony at a WJEC16 panel on journalism education in the Pacific chaired by me, with the presence of the panel members being sponsored by the NZ Institute of Pacific Research.
Explaining how the two months of student unrest began across Papua New Guinea’s six universities – but mostly centred on UPNG in the capital of Port Moresby, and the University of Technology in the second city Lae – she said it was an irony that protests were triggered on World Press Freedom Day (May 3).
“The Journalism Strand was preparing to celebrate freedom of the press that day. However, this did not eventuate because the academic space was taken up by a student forum.
“This was the beginning of an eight-week stand-off by the students who demanded that the Prime Minister, Peter O’Neill, step down from office and face police over allegations of fraud. However, the prime minister said: ‘I will not step down.’”
Matasororo said O’Neill had challenged the issue of an arrest warrant against him, saying this case was now before the courts. Under the Papua New Guinea Constitution, O’Neill could be removed by a no-confidence vote, or on criminal charges. But the former option was shut down this week when O’Neill survived a no-confidence vote by 85 to 21 votes.
Among other issues that spurred the students into organising class boycotts and protests was the O’Neill government’s actions in dismantling the police fraud squad [National Fraud and Anti-Corruption directorate] – the very office that would investigate the prime minister. But, as Matasororo pointed out, the squad was later reinstated.
Another O’Neill move was adjourning Parliament until November to stave off the possibility of the no-confidence vote. (A Supreme Court ruling forced the reconvening of Parliament and the vote).
Violating the Constitution
Students became convinced that Prime Minister O’Neill was acting in violation of the Constitution and they saw themselves as defending the rule of law on behalf of all Papua New Guineans.
Earlier in the protests students at UPNG had set on fire 800 copies of the two national dailies being sold at the Waigani campus front gates in frustration over what they perceived to be the news media taking sides and promoting the O’Neill government’s agenda.
“The burning was an indication that they disliked the papers’ coverage of events leading up the [first] protest. Why should the Student Representative Council go as far as preferring certain media outlets over others?” Matasororo asked the forum which was syndicated globally on livestream.
“The Post-Courier, The National and television station EM TV were banned covering student activities on campus. The UPNG is a public and government-run institution and is a public space open to everyone, including the media. If students reacted that way, it brought up issues of credibility and integrity of the freedom of the press in Papua New Guinea.
“Which brings to light the question of ethics.”
Matasororo quoted from a Loop PNG report bylined Carmella Gware, who talked to a student leader in spite of the ban on local media:
“We saw the newspapers and saw that the reports were very shallow and biased.
“They were not actual reports of what we students are portraying at the university. That’s why, to show our frustration, we went out to the bus stop and burnt those papers.
“What we displayed in the morning shows that we have no trust in the media,” the student leader stated (sic) said.
— Carmella Gware – Loop PNG
Investigation needed
“While I acknowledge and appreciate the tireless efforts of the media’s coverage of the student protests,” said Matasororo, “for me this is a very strong statement that needs to be investigated.
The burning of newspapers at the University of Papua New Guinea. Newspapers were also set on fire at Unitech. Image: Asia Pacific Report
“This needs to be done by all stakeholders concerned to promote fair and just reporting and the essence of good ethics and good journalism.
“The stakeholders must include, but not be limited to he following: the publisher and managements of the papers, the Media Council of PNG, Transparency International, Ombudsman Commission and the journalism educators of the UPNG and the Catholic-run Divine Word University.
“For the publishers, credibility is questioned; for the Media Council it is a threat against the profession; and for the educators – where are we going wrong in teaching ethics, are we giving enough prominence that it deserves?
“These are questions that need to be answered, in order to promote a robust and conducive environment in which journalists should operate in.”
On June 8, said Matasororo, the protests –until then peaceful – “took an ugly turn”. Several students were wounded, some news reports saying as many as 30. But there were no deaths.
“Social media was running hot with images and comments uploaded in real time. Some of what was coming from social media was emotional reporting.
“Information was distorted with some news stations reporting casualties.
“An Australian-based media outlet reported four deaths and isolated reports on radio, television and social media that day created a new level of fear, confusion and anxiety among residents.
“For me that day, I saw how powerful the media was, and when it is not applied correctly, it can be tragic.”
Professor David Robie, former head of journalism at the University of the South Pacific, talks human rights at the Pacific Community's Human Rights and Media Forum in Suva in 2016. Also pictured are Kalafi Moala (Tonga), Stanley Simpson (Fiji) and Belinda Kora (PNG). Image: Pacific Community
Pacific Community
Professor David Robie, a prominent journalist and director of Auckland University of Technology’s Pacific Media Centre, shared his experiences of human rights coverage in the region and stressed the role of news media as watchdogs at a Human Rights and Media Forum held on 13–15 April 2016 in Nadi, Fiji.
Professor Robie, former head of journalism at the University of the South Pacific (USP), was chief guest.
Senior journalists and government communication officers from 13 Pacific countries participated in the forum, which had the theme: “Enhancing a human rights-based approach to news reporting”.
“Human rights-oriented journalism is more focused on global rather than on selective reporting, with an emphasis on the vulnerable and empowerment for the affected and marginalised people — a voice for the voiceless,” said Professor Robie.
After the forum, he said in an interview “journalists ought to be human rights defenders and bear witness to Pacific human rights violations.
“This forum was remarkably successful in providing the tools for a wide range of Pacific media people to bring accountability to offenders against human rights. I congratulate the Pacific Community’s Regional Rights Resource Team (RRRT) on organising this important forum.”
The forum, which was supported by the Australian government and European Union, released an outcomes document, reaffirming the vital role the media play and recognising the importance of strengthening news reporting, using a human rights-based approach.
Strong relationship
The outcomes document also acknowledges the importance of building a strong relationship between government communication personnel and journalists in sharing information and the roles they play in disseminating information.
This document is being formatted into a poster for newsrooms in the region.
Romulo Nayacalevu, SPC’s Human Rights Adviser, said: “The media have a powerful voice in highlighting human rights issues and concerns, and this workshop provides the opportunity for journalists to dialogue on human rights and the media.
“The SPC is delighted to work closely with the Pacific media to support their work in human rights reporting and we are excited about the outcomes document, which provides them with tips on how to do that.”
Giving a Pacific journalist’s perspective, Stanley Simpson, managing director of Business Melanesia Ltd, stressed that journalists in the region were frequently victims of human rights abuses while reporting on human rights in the region.
“Pacific journalists are often young and almost always broke, some have very little life experience, they are underpaid and overworked, they get threatened and intimidated regularly, and they endure a high pressure environment,” he said.
“People like to see journalists as instruments of change, but sometimes journalists just feel that they are being used by different sides with different agendas.
‘Day-to-day slog’
“So often they are going through the day-to-day slog of getting a newspaper or news bulletin out — it is easy to forget that they have the potential to influence change. It is important that this is addressed and journalists understand their roles as agents of change.”
Belinda Kora, news director of Papua New Guinea FM, agreed that journalists could influence change but said their reporting must be responsible.
“I keep reminding my reporters that when it comes to reporting about human rights, if your story does not impact on the lives of victims or anyone else for that matter, you are only taking up space,” she said.
She added that, importantly, journalists needed to know their rights to be able to report responsibly.
“How can we journalists in the region report effectively if we don’t know our rights?” Kora asked.
The three-day forum strengthened media capacity in rights-based reporting to reflect the aspirations of Pacific Island communities for equality, development and social justice, said RRRT team leader Nicol Cave.
Marian Kupu of Broadcom Broadcasting Limited, Tonga, said: “I found the three-day forum very encouraging because I learnt about my country’s human rights commitments and I see my role as a journalist to report on the gaps in order to encourage decision makers to prioritise and address the issues.”
“Giving voice to the voiceless” and “championing the rights of all peoples” were key messages highlighted at the forum.
The forum was organised by the Regional Rights Resource Team (RRRT) of the Pacific Community in partnership with the Pacific Media Assistance Scheme, the Pacific Islands News Association (PINA) and the Journalism Programme of the University of the South Pacific.
Alistar Kata, an award-winning journalist with Tagata Pasifika, made a 15 minute mini-documentary about the work of the Pacific Media Centre, founded by Dr David Robie in October 2007, and its dedicated crew.
At the time, she was the Pacific Media Watch freedom project contributing editor and chief storyteller.
Eyes of Fire is an updated version of the account of the 1985 sinking of the Rainbow Warrior, first published in 1986. No New Zealander old enough to have been around then will be unaware of the incident, but this is a timely reminder for a newer generation of the day when terrorism reached Waitemata Harbour.
Terrorism is supposed to be the last resort of alienated young men from places we know nothing of, but the bomb which blew up the Rainbow Warrior in downtown Auckland was detonated by men and women employed by the Government of France.
If you didn’t know otherwise, you might suppose that some time before the attack France had suffered a traumatic event, because how else might such an odd barbarism be explained? France surely is a modern and agreeable place which merits our sympathy as the target of terrorism, not its perpetrator.
Not really. France is the same place with the same public institutions as it had in 1985, its current President being from the same party — the Socialists for heaven’s sake — as the President back then. Neither, in essence, has its global circumstances changed.
France regarded Greenpeace as ‘terrorists’ Pollution of land and sea and the degradation of habitats are even more of a problem now than they were last century and you don’t find advanced Western democracies openly calling for the globe to get ever dirtier. And when the Rainbow Warrior docked in Auckland in July 1985, it was in the middle of voyages to draw attention to all sorts of environmental issues. Greenpeace had protested nuclear tests, acid rain, whaling, attacks on dolphins and the dumping of toxic waste. It was doing great work.
Not in the eyes of the French State. Their problem was that the Rainbow Warrior was due to sail towards Tahiti and the French islands in the south-east Pacific, where they were testing nukes. If, for the rest of us, it was bad enough that the Russians and Americans were in a perpetual nuclear confrontation which had the potential to wipe us all away, that tension was at least understandable, given the circumstances at the time.
But France had as much reason to want to join the nuclear club as it would have if it started to do so now. That is, zero. It was pure folly.
Being primarily focused on environmental issues, Greenpeace was protesting the very real and obvious threat to marine life. The French of course said that their tests were clean. Which prompted the obvious response that they should, therefore, test their bombs in mainland France. Rainbow Warrior had just arrived from the Marshall Islands, where the US had long polluted (and where areas are still uninhabitable) with nuclear bombs.
By 1985, France had conducted 193 tests in the Pacific and it wasn’t done yet. France (still) pretends to believe that its overseas colonies are no different politically from Paris or Marseilles, so it felt able to treat the New Zealand government, then beginning to respond to Greenpeace’s campaign for a nuclear-free Pacific, as an ally of its activities, which France labelled terrorism.
Staked out on watch
So it was that one winter’s night on Tamaki Drive boat club members, who had been the target of thieves, were staked out on watch when a speedboat landed. Two people got out, dumped the boat’s engine in the water, and were then picked by a car driven by someone in a frogman suit. The yachties noted the car’s plate number.
A later search of the water came up with water bottles made in France. NZ’s petty criminals had enabled the police to arrest France’s state terrorists.
A Frenchwoman who joined the open activities of Greenpeace in Auckland apparently expressed hostility to the idea of independence for New Caledonia and support for France’s bombs, both opinions being the last things you’d expect to hear around Greenpeace. She advanced the rationale that nukes were needed as otherwise “we risk becoming like Finland, which is so influenced by Russia”.
Hearing this ingénue, an experienced observer who knew European history would have intuited that she had been indoctrinated by an older and nostalgic extremist as no-one else had worried about Finnish sovereignty since about 1940. She turned out later to have been a spy.
While it might not be surprising that no local NZ activist would have suspected her, it is surprising that an agent of the French secret police was so gauche.
It seems that the French didn’t know enough of their own history to have created a convincing persona for their agent, who would have been detected had she operated in a more experienced milieu.
Operationally, too, French tactics were clumsy. Twice before they had sunk ships, and both times they achieved nothing beyond discrediting the activities they were hoping to defend.
And just as its secret police have been amateurishly incompetent, so has its political class. David Robie tells us in Eyes of Fire that theories from the political elites in France included the assertion that low-tech Greenpeace was about to advance on French Polynesia with an armada so loaded with the latest gadgets to thwart the tests that the nuke programme would have to be abandoned.
It was said that Greenpeace was financed by BP to maintain its oil interests, that the UK’s MI6, the South African secret police and the Soviet’s KGB had infiltrated Greenpeace. The latter, an old favourite, was picked up a naive NZ media and across the Tasman in the Australian. This detail is significant in that, as a “quality” Tory broadsheet with sophisticated journalists, the paper must have known the claim was suspect. Ideology trumps truth every time.
The rhetoric did not often reach eloquence. One letter to the Greenpeace office after the bombing warned of the traitors ready to deliver the country to the commies. They included “pacifists, hooligans, hippies, trade unions, PLO, Khomeinists, Labour terrorists – all the same riff-raff, all KGB agents.”
No wonder the correspondent concluded with: “Revenge. Better dead than Red. No more Vietnams”. For years serious and educated people had been debating this dilemma of whether they would prefer to be crimson or expired.
Exact opposite of intended result You’d think that the combined resources of the French elites would have come up with something better than these childish conspiracy theories, but perhaps the greatest of the many asinine calculations of the French State was its assumption that blowing up a Greenie ship in an allied country on the other side of the world would help it to carry on poisoning the South Pacific.
Instead, inevitably, international outrage raised Greenpeace’s profile enormously. It is no coincidence that the peace and environmental movements around the world became increasingly popular from the mid-1980s.
Only one man was killed, a Portuguese-born photographer, Fernando Pereira, but there could easily have been a high death toll. The frogmen who placed the bomb timed it to detonate just before midnight when normally there would have been many others in their cabins, but most happened to be on shore that night.
Robie himself had been on board when the ship docked in Auckland, having sailed from the Marshall Islands.
Even after the event, after the terrorists were caught, President Mitterrand’s France knew no shame, and the dirty tricks continued. Now perhaps there’s some resolution, some (in the irritating vernacular of the day) closure.
In 1987 – after Robie’s original account came out – the Rainbow Warrior was sunk off Matauri Bay in Northland as a likely future marine habitat for divers to explore. And in 1996 France signed the nuclear test ban treaty.
Robie’s professional life has been devoted to the peoples of the Pacific. A journalist and university teacher, he’s written a series of investigative accounts of the struggles of the island nations against big power politics.
Eyes Of Fire is an excellent production, thorough and informed with a restrained passion, with interesting photographs. French politicians, by and large, might now be behaving in a more acceptable fashion, but the global issues that Robie has analysed – of pollution and violence and the stupidity and corruption of power – still demand our witness.
This review of Eyes of Fire was written for CAFCA’s Foreign Control Watchdog 141 magazine April 2016 and has been republished with permission on Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific Day. The publisher Little Island Press’s companion website for the book, Eyes of Fire: 30 Years On, features articles and a photo gallery by the author David Robie; an article by French journalist Pierre Gleizes; author of Rainbow Warrior Mon Amour; and more than 40 video interviews and stories featuring the protagonists by AUT University student journalists.
Pollution of land and sea and the degradation of habitats are even more of a problem now than they were last century and you don’t find advanced Western democracies openly calling for the globe to get ever dirtier. And when the Rainbow Warrior docked in Auckland in July 1985, it was in the middle of voyages to draw attention to all sorts of environmental issues. Greenpeace had protested nuclear tests, acid rain, whaling, attacks on dolphins and the dumping of toxic waste. It was doing great work.
