The Fiji 2000 coup archive of the University of the South Pacific journalism students at the University of Technology Sydney.
Crisis coverage by University of the South Pacific journalism students
An archive of the exclusive University of the South Pacific journalism programme coverage of the Fiji coup by George Speight in May-August 2000. This was published by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) after the students’ own website was closed by the USP administration.
David Robie and journalism students at the University of the South Pacific reported the George Speight coup in Fiji on their website Pacific Journalism Online [now Wansolwara Online].
The original site was closed down by the University of the South Pacific (USP) administration on 29 May 2000 in response to threats, and new stories about the Fiji crisis were not permitted to be published on the Fiji site.
For three months, University of Technology, Sydney, journalists Fran Molloy and Kate MacDonald published stories and photographs from Fiji journalism students and USP staff on the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) website — now zip file archived in the UTS Library.
Frontline Reporters: USP student reportage of the 2000 Fiji coup Video: USP Journalism 2000
The site was designed and set up within hours by Fran Molloy, and with the support of ACIJ director Chris Nash and head of the journalism department Wendy Bacon, the USP journalism students were able to have their stories published shortly after they were filed.
The USP students subsequently won several awards for their online (and print) coverage of the coup in the annual Journalism Education Association (JEA) Ossie Awards 2000, including best regular publication in the Australia/NZ and Pacific region.
Awards went to Pacific Journalism Online and the students working on Wansolwara.
David Robie is an award-winning New Zealand investigative journalist who has reported on the 1987 coups and many other issues and events in the Pacific. He was then running the USP journalism programme.
He is founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review and a graduate of the UTS Master of Arts (Journalism) programme.
Broadcaster Pat Craddock, then with the USP Media Centre, was also a key leader of efforts by the journalism team to communicate the coup to the outside world.
The Pacific Journalism Online site was restored, and remained a successful South Pacific news site until March 2007. It later became Wansolwara Online. A mirror of the Wansolwara special coup online edition of the newspaper established by former USP design lecturer Mara Fulmer in the US.
Judging by how the number of “hits” at my Café Pacific blog tripled after news emerged late in August [1998] about condemnation by some quarters in Fiji officialdom and a handful of anonymous and self-interested media people, online readers were quick to check us out for Pacific “hidden agendas”, as John Pilger would say.
This mild website barely caused a ripple with officialdom for the two years it was hosted at the University of Papua New Guinea. But a mere six weeks in Fiji has led to some local media personalities — some would describe them as hacks — and two misled ministers ducking for cover.
New Zealand Herald report 2 September 1998 . . . mounting international support for the lecturers. Image: NZH headline screenshot CP
Firstly, I need to clear up any misconceptions lingering after the smear campaign of the past week, which had a Kafkaesque quality — the accusations from faceless accusers kept changing ground.
Neither I nor my colleague, Ingrid Leary, a qualified lawyer and journalism academic, have been in breach of our Fiji work permits. These are trumped up claims to divert people away from the substance of my websites or her Media Watch column in Fiji’s Daily Post. Nor do I make any money from websites.
Nor do I have any business interests in Fiji. My commitment is to rebuilding the University of the South Pacific journalism programme which has awaited a much needed professional boost.
Café Pacific began life as an educational project in 1996 at the University of Technology Sydney and promptly won an award. It is now continuing as an independent cyberspace netzine, but it also has a role, along with other media websites, as a teaching tool with my senior journalism students at USP.
Actually, the website is not physically in Fiji at all. Although it has a Fiji “domain”, Café Pacific is actually set up on web servers in three other countries. Impossible to gag.
Why try to gag us?
So what is at the bottom of all this? Why should a group of journalists in Fiji want to try to gag Ingrid and me, or try to have our work permits revoked? Is it the continuation of the campaign at the start of this year against our appointments? Or is it the vendetta waged against me by some journalists at Islands Business since the military coups more than a decade ago?
Reporters Without Borders protests against “harassment” of David Robie and Ingrid Leary on 31 August 1998. Image: RSF letter screenshot CP
Why the hypocrisy of Pacific Islands News Association president William Parkinson in not standing up for academic and media freedom in our case, and trotting out the work permit red herring? And this after an international media freedom organisation, Reporters Sans Frontières, had already protested to the Fiji Government against our harassment. (The national university staff association of New Zealand and others have also followed with protests – see Pacific Media Watch). Is it because of my formal complaint filed with the Fiji Media Council in April against some sections of the local news media and PINA individuals?
Does it have something to do with attempts to corner the lion’s share of journalism education and training funds for the South Pacific? Independent university courses don’t fit comfortably with this grand scheme because they teach critical thinking as well as vocational skills. And the fact is that in the past six months Ingrid and I have turned the USP journalism programme into the best in the region.
Or is it unashamedly resentment at two regional staff being appointed from New Zealand instead of a local candidate from Fiji? This is a regional institution, not a Fiji national university, and its policy is appointing the best people for the job.
You make up your own mind. But here is a rundown on the facts:
We reportedly became under threat of having our work permits being revoked because of sensitivity by the Fiji government over media commentaries in what has been dubbed by Pacific Media Watch as the first “freedom of the internet media” case in the South Pacific. But it quickly became apparent that the real sensitivity was from certain quarters in the media.
On Thursday, 27 August 1998, The Fiji Times carried a story reported by Margaret Wise claiming that the Fiji government was investigating complaints that Leary and I had allegedly “breached” our work permit conditions. The inquiry was said to be directed towards revoking our permits.
Focused on my report
The inquiry apparently focused on my report which criticised Fiji government plans to legislate for a Media Council to replace the independent and self-regulating council already in place.
The newspaper followed with similar claims against Ingrid and me the following day, saying the government “would withdraw [our] work permits if they were found to have breached the terms under which they were given’. After cursory attempts at getting comment on the first day, Wise failed on the second day to make any serious attempt to seek our views or balance the allegations.
Worse, the newspaper failed to report an official statement by the university’s Registrar, Sarojini Pillay, defending us and stating that our activities were within the normal roles of research and publication carried out by academics.
The university statement also quoted Professor Subramani, head of the literature and language department, saying that the pair of us had been doing “outstanding” teaching and publication for the journalism programme.
Other news media in Fiji did carry the university’s statement and cited our rejection of the claims by the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration.
None of the complaints were directed to either the university or us. However, The Fiji Times reported that the ministry’s permanent Secretary, Emitai Boladuadua, said some government departments and some “members of the public” — as it turned out, some media people who had been opposed to us taking up our positions earlier this year — had made complaints.
Jone Dakuvula, a former press secretary to Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and a onetime investigator with New Zealand’s Human Rights Commission, was quick to point out in the Sunday Times on August 30 that under the new Fiji Constitution [Section 30 (1)]:
Every person has the right to freedom of expression, including: Freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas; andFreedom of the press and other media.
He added: “Reading from your report, it appears to me that some local news media employees or journalists were involved in these complaints, which seem to be based mainly on these persons’ disagreements with either the views of David Robie and Ingrid Leary, or the fact that they have been lawfully employed by USP.
“Our new Constitution has been in force for barely one month and here we have some news media people attempting to suppress two well-qualified journalists’ freedom of expression, perhaps in the hope that they could be expelled from this country for the ‘crime’ of writing, publishing and teaching journalism.
“Where is the Fiji journalists’ much vaunted Code of Ethics?”
An international pariah
Next May, Fiji faces its first general election since the new Constitution — its adoption helped regain the country’s place in the Commonwealth after being an international pariah since the 1987 coups. A media freedom issue of this kind testing the Constitution would be an embarrassment.
Fiji Assistant Minister for Information, Ratu Josefa Dimuri. 1998.
The speculation about “news media people” was quickly confirmed by an admission in a letter by the Assistant Information Minister, Ratu Josefa Dimuri, in the Fiji Times on September 1 when he said: “I would be failing my friends and former colleagues in local journalism if I did not ensure their employment opportunities are not trampled on by foreigners.”Dimuri also noted that the ministry had “received complaints from both local journalists and regional media organisations who were of the view that their interests were being jeopardised by the involvement of these two people in other areas of work not stipulated in their work permits”.
It is understood that the ministry’s concerns focused on articles appearing on Asia-Pacific Network/Café Pacific website. I teach internet journalism at USP (including having set up the regional Pacific Journalism Online website [now called Wansolwara]), have maintained the Café Pacific site for two years at universities, and it has only become an issue in Fiji.
In the case of Ingrid, the complaints concern her weekly Media Watch column in the Daily Post and her part-time teaching at the Fiji Journalism Institute – at the request of local journalists.
The president of the USP Staff Association, Dr Ganesh Chand, has defended us, saying we have “perfect freedom” to carry out research and publish in areas of our expertise. The Fiji Council of Trade Unions secretary Pratap Chand has also called on the government to “stop victimising and harassing” us.
Many organisations and individuals have strongly supported us, but few of their letters have been reported in the local press which raises serious questions about the impartiality of the Fiji news media.
However, both newspapers did support us in the editorial columns, TheFiji Times describing the response to us as “draconian”. Labelling Senator Bole’s attack as “vicious”, Fiji’s Daily Post said the government was “not fully and properly informed” on the issue.
The Post added: “The saddest thing is the deafaning silence from the Pacific Islands News Association and the Fiji Media Council. By failing to support the rights of journalists, like Mr Robie and Ms Leary, whether they be teachers, students or whatever, these organisations are helping to destroy the very freedom of expression they have so often said they protect.”
Media freedom attacks criticised
New Zealand’s national staff association representing academics at all of the nation’s universities made a strong protest to both Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and Information Minister Filipe Bole in support of us. Executive director Rob Crozier, of the Association of the University Staff, said: “We view very seriously attacks on academic freedom.”
“As a member of UNESCO, Fiji will be a signatory to the Recommendation on the Status of Higher Education teaching personnel, which was adopted by UNESCO in November 1987,” he said.
“All higher-education teaching personnel should enjoy freedom of thought, conscience, religion, expression, assembly and association as well as the right to liberty and security of the person and liberty of movement.
“They should not be hindered or impeded in exercising their civil rights as citizens, including the right to contribute to social change through freely expressing their opinion of state policies and of policies affecting higher education. They should not suffer any penalties simply because of the exercise of such rights.”
One of the founders of the journalism programme at USP, Professor Andrew Horn, who is now at Harvard University in the US, also defended us. In a message, he said: “For too long the countries of the Pacific basin have relied excessively on external media sources to provide information and to set the parameters of debate, while local print and broadcast services were content to serve very restricted interest groups.”
It was precisely these sorts of problems, Horn argues, that the USP journalism programme was established to address: “Your work to help in the professionalisation of the region’s media community, to expand its scope and give greater confidence to its practitioners should be applauded by the peoples and the governments of all 12 of the university’s member states.”
Anonymous ‘sneaks’
Bill Southworth, executive director of the NZ Journalists Training Organisation, said the Pacific journalism community was “disappointed” at the continuing harassment of Leary and me: “In the latest incident, anonymous ‘sneaks’ have drawn it to the government’s attention that Robie and Leary have been writing commentaries on journalism and guest lecturing at the Fiji Journalism Institute.”
Added Southworth, a former editor of the Fiji Sun: “Perhaps those who wish to silence Robie and Leary should take time to read Fiji’s new constitution. Section 30 says every person has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to receive and impart ideas.
“Even Kiwi journalism lecturers.”
Many journalists have also protested. Vimal Madhavan, chairman of the Fiji Journalists Association and member of the Press Council of Fiji in 1986/87, says: “Threats to journalists, foreign or local, such as questioning their right to work, is as much an assault on our freedoms as sending in armed troops to shut down a newsroom.”
John Manukia, Pacific Affairs reporter with The New Zealand Herald, says: “Nothing less than democracy and freedom of expression is at stake. To suggest that writing columns in local newspapers and on the Internet goes against the description of work permits is ridiculous. You are doing work in your field of expertise. To suggest otherwise is nonsense and I condemn such an act.”
The events of the past two weeks are an indictment of the current standard of Fiji journalism, and the lack of fairness and balance in the media. Sadly, after my five years living in Papua New Guinea, I would have to say that the professionalism of Fiji news media does not compare favourably.
David Robie is publisher of Café Pacific and journalism coordinator at the University of the South Pacific.
Samoa Observer publisher Gatoaitele Savea Sano Malifa . . . vigorously reporting allegations of corruption, nepotism and abuse of public office, the Observer and its staff have frequently faced harassment. Image: Malifa FB
A feisty newspaper publisher’s loss to the Samoan prime minister in a hefty defamation case and manipulation by the Fiji Information Ministry in an attempt to impose legislative curbs have once again put the South Pacific media on the backfoot over freedom of information.
By David Robie in Suva
Press freedom Pacific-style is again on the rocks. A feisty newspaper publisher’s loss to the Samoan prime minister in a hefty defamation case and manipulation by the Fiji Information Ministry in an attempt to impose legislative curbs before next year’s first genuinely democratic election since the military coups have once again put the South Pacific media on the backfoot over freedom of information.
Savea Sano Malifa, editor and publisher of the Samoa Observer, believes he now may be forced to sell the daily newspaper many regard as the scourge of the Samoan chiefly establishment.
After losing in Prime Minister Tofilau Eti Alesana’s civil defamation action which has cost him a US$16,000 judgement in damages in the Supreme Court in Apia in July [1998], he also faces a criminal libel case filed by Tofilau.
He has already had crippling legal fees of US$76,000 to pay off and now the judgment is another serious blow to the viability of the paper.
Vigorously reporting allegations of corruption, nepotism and abuse of public office, the Samoa Observer and its staff have frequently faced harassment — including a suspicious fire which burned down the paper’s printing plant.
Malifa’s recent troubles as the most outspoken editor of Samoa have come amid several recent setbacks for media freedom in the region.
Media freedom developments Among the developments:
Fiji’s Assistant Minister of Information Ratu Josefa Dimuri, ironically a former journalist on the Murdoch-owned Fiji Times, is insisting on dumping the country’s well-respected independent media council and replacing it with a new government-initiated body and laws imposing “codes of conduct”.
A report by an Australian consultant that called for the early retirement of Radio Tonga’s general manager, Tavake Fusimalohi, and the abolition of his son ‘Ahongalu Fusimalohi’s position as deputy in an attempt to restructure the station for a “positive course for the future” was met with bitter attacks. Moves were reportedly made by the station’s senior executives to have the consultant blacklisted around the region. The conservative station was described as being overstaffed and lagging behind many other Pacific Island broadcasters in operational practice and performance.
Polynesian villagers blockaded the French state-run television and radio station RFO in the territory of Wallis and Futuna in May, preventing local broadcasts for a week. They were angry about the “insufficient coverage” given to a traditional dance spectacular. The chief editor, Philippe Voisin, station director Bernard Joyeux and technical director Alain Delabre were held hostage.
The same month, the editor of the Solomon Islands Voice, former Television New Zealand journalist Carole Colville, faced a weekend of harassment after her newspaper exposed allegations of a corrupt land deal. The deal involved prominent Solomon Islands businessman Rex Fera who is an associate of Prime Minister Bartholomew Ulufa’alu. Describing the actions as “persecution”, Colville said men demanding to see the paper’s publisher, John Asipara, had raided her home early on a Sunday morning. Ironically, the intimidation happened on the same weekend as the UNESCO-sponsored World Press Freedom Day was being marked globally.
World Press Freedom Day was also controversial in Vanuatu where Trading Post publisher Marc Neil-Jones reacted angrily over inaugural Media Freedom Awards presented by Vanuatu Broadcasting and Television Corporation chairman Kalvao Moli to three former prime ministers — Father Walter Lini, Maxime Carlot-Korman, and Serge Vohor — and current Prime Minister Donald Kalpokas. Neil-Jones withdrew all support from the Trading Post to the Press Klab and pulled the newspaper out of the organisation. Storming out of the awards ceremony, he said: “I’ve great respect for Father Lini but he deported Christine Coombs over her paper, Voice of Vanuatu, and banned journalists like Jemima Garrett from entering Vanuatu because his government did not like the way they reported the news.”His government rigidly controlled the press and no independent newspapers were allowed. Why on earth is he being given a media freedom award?”
Although press freedom has been supported in Papua New Guinea by Prime Minister Bill Skate after three controversial draft media laws were scrapped last year before the Sandline affair, he has been frequently quick to condemn the international media.At a National Press Club luncheon in Canberra in August, he blamed foreign journalists for a painting a negative view of his country. Papua New Guinea, he said, is the victim of sensational reporting by reporters “who have little understanding” of the country.
Radio New Zealand International was forced to end its afternoon and evening broadcasts to listeners in the Pacific region from early August, following a slashed budget. Funding cuts by New Zealand’s Foreign Ministry were decided on after considering closing the shortwave station altogether. RNZI employs a number of Pacific journalists as stringers and has a independent perspective in the region.
A US State Department report was critical of the Federated States of Micronesia government over last year’s Sherry O’Sullivan affair. It said the government took actions “aimed at stifling investigation and criticism of government activities and figures”.The report, entitled “Micronesia Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1997,” questioned the FSM government’s support of the press, after O’Sullivan, a Canadian citizen editing the monthly newspaper FSM News, was forced to leave the island. She had been declared an “undesirable alien” because of her newspaper’s vigorous reporting.
Work permits
Assaults on media freedom have by no means been restricted to governments alone. Twice during 1997, New Zealand journalist Michael Field was turned down by the Fiji government over work permits while trying to establish a regional Pacific bureau in Suva for The New Zealand Herald.
But it is believed that the real reason he was blocked was because of intense lobbying by two prominent media personalities. Opposition also came again earlier this year from the Pacific Islands News Association to the appointment of Fiji Television journalist Ingrid Leary and myself as lecturer and journalism programme cooordinator respectively (we are both New Zealanders) at the University of the South Pacific.
Although PINA later publicly denied that it was opposed to our recruitment because we were not Pacific Islanders as had been widely reported, it was well known among Fiji journalists that a PINA official had lobbied and written in an unsuccessful bid to prevent us taking up the position.
I have filed a complaint with the Fiji Media Council over this affair. [Note: On 2 November 1998, Fiji’s Daily Post apologised for the misrepresentations following mediation by the Media Council.]
But the future of the council itself is also uncertain as the Fiji government seeks to find ways to muzzle the news media in spite of the new constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech and information.
Although the recent Thomson Foundation report to the government strongly recommended self-regulation, Assistant Minister Dimuri seems determined to interpret the report rather differently.
While the Thomson Report generally gives the Fiji news media a supportive nod, it specifically states that the media should not be licensed and that there should be no extension of the law to deal with publication of leaked documents.
In her Media Watch column, Leary asked: “Why is Ratu Dimuri insisting on creating a government-initiated media council?
“With respect to the minister, it is charming to think that creating a new council would be in line with the Thomson Foundation recommendations and, indeed, the new constitution.
“But it is difficult to see how this is anything more than a charming bid to control the media”.
David Robie is journalism coordinator at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji and co-convenor of Pacific Media Watch.
David Robie in his office at the University of the South Pacific's School of Humanities in 1988. Image: USP
Two New Zealand journalism educators are still in suspense over their positions at the University of the South Pacific amid controversy over the “politicising” of the appointments by non-academic bodies.
Two New Zealand journalists recruited to run the University of the South Pacific journalism degree programme have been told they were granted work permits by the Fiji government after weeks of controversy.
But a day later they were told Immigration officials were still considering their case — after one lecturer had turned up for work.
University authorities earlier confirmed that officials had authorised the permits after journalism students had petitioned Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and a series of letters in the daily newspapers had supported the recruited lecturers.
Author and journalism academic David Robie, who currently heads the journalism programme at the University of Papua New Guinea, has been appointed senior lecturer and journalism coordinator at USP.
Ingrid Leary, who has been executive producer at Fiji One television over the past year, has been appointed television lecturer.
The Suva-based Pacific Islands News Association (PINA), comprising news organisations and senior media executives, had been pressing for the appointment of a local candidate who had no academic publishing record or experience of running a journalism programme.
Unsigned stories in the Fiji Daily Post, apparently linked to PINA officials, highlighted Robie’s past articles and books critical of the 1987 military coups.
Recent letters to the two daily newspapers in support of the recruited lecturers have highlighted the issues of academic and press freedom.
“There is the pungent scent of a personal and ideological vendetta against Robie. This is in stark contrast to PINA’s stated objective of ‘fostering professional fellowship and cooperation’,” Pacific Media Watch co-convenor Peter Cronau said in the Daily Post.
In The Fiji Times, a former USP journalism lecturer, Philip Cass, said a “petty-minded campaign” appeared to have delayed the work permits.
“Perhaps that attitude stems from the notion that PINA should be the controlling body for journalism training and education in the Pacific. This idea is, of course, nonsense,” he wrote.
Fiji Media Training Institute director Jo Nata, also writing in the Times, claimed there appeared to be a “concerted and orchestrated effort” to prevent Robie’s appointment.
He added: “I further suspect that the Daily Post and PINA have been used for the personal agenda of people who have had a long standing feud with Robie.”
This is the third incident involving New Zealand journalists and work permits in Fiji in recent months. Auckland-based Agence France-Presse correspondent Michael Field was last year twice denied a work permit application to set up a Suva bureau for a New Zealand newspaper.
Immigration officials considered the cases of Robie and Leary again yesterday after delays of more than two months.
On Monday, a Journalism Students Association deputation delivered a protest letter to Prime Minister Rabuka complaining about the “politicisation” of the work permits by “non-academic” bodies and appealed for the two lecturers to be allowed to start work.
“We feel that it is extremely unfair on us students to have to suffer because some non-academic bodies are not happy with their appointment,” the letter said.
“We understand that David Robie and Ingrid Leary were considered the best qualified and experienced to teach Pacific journalism at the present time by the USP Selection Board.
“Through our own investigations, and having looked into their accomplishments as journalists and/or lecturers, we support their appointments and have been looking forward to learning from and working with them,” the students said.
“As students we are gravely concerned that the university’s academic independence appears to be compromised by outside influences.”
Leary is taking up her position immediately and Robie is expected to arrive at USP from Papua New Guinea in mid-March.
'Community, demagogues and the South Pacific news media' as published in Media International Australia, 1998. Image: MIA
By David Robie
On 19 October 1995, the Governor-General of Papua New Guinea issued the terms of reference for a Constitutional Review Committee’s (CRC) Subcommittee on Media Accountability: to examine ‘whether changes need to be made to ensure that, while freedom of the press is maintained, owners, editors and journalists of all elements of the media are accountable and that persons aggrieved by media abuses have reasonable redress’.
The CRC held a public seminar in January 1996 to explore the issues and the Media Council of Papua New Guinea held a ‘freedom at the crossroads’ seminar the following month.
Public responses were overwhelmingly in favour of the traditional ‘free’ press in Papua New Guinea, as guaranteed under Section 46 of the Constitution.
The report of the Subcommittee on Media Accountability to Parliament in June 1996 essentially came to the same conclusion.
However, the CRC introduced three draft media laws in November which introduced a controversial system involving a Media Commission, registration of journalists, licensing of media organisations and serious penalties for transgressors.
The proposed legislation was widely condemned and was eventually shelved in February 1997, A general view is that the media debate was manipulated by a small group of politicians out of self-interest.
This paper examines the developments in the context of the erosion of the news media and free expression in the South Pacific generally.
"The muzzling of the Pacific press" . . . the NZ Monthly Review article in December 1988 that sparked the furore. Image: NZMR screenshot CP
A decade-old vendetta against a New Zealand journalist by a Fiji-based media group has again resurfaced.
By Harry Stoner
In mid-1989, the New Zealand Journalist branded as a ‘personal vendetta’ a series of attacks by a group of Fiji-based journalists against New Zealand author and journalism educator David Robie. Later that year, an internationally published book by Robie, Blood on their Banner: Nationalist Struggles in the South Pacific, raised questions in a section entitled ‘A compromised media’. Now that Robie has been appointed to head the journalism programme at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, five unsigned attacks have been published in the Fiji Daily Post and Sunday Post. They were the subject of a formal ethics complaint filed with the Fiji News Council in April 1998. The Daily Post publicly apologised to Robie in November 1998.
ROBIE TARGET OF VENDETTA
Two Suva-based magazines are having an unseemly spat in which an entire edition of one publication, printed and bound, was recalled from the brink of distribution to avoid legal action from a rival.
At the centre of this bitter row is freelance Pacific affairs writer (and New Zealand Journalists’ Union member) David Robie, who dared to criticise a publication he once wrote for and was then the object of a lengthy personal attack in one of its following issues.
It is a story of press freedom, the tensions between journalists and publishers, and the politics of reporting a part of the world that is increasingly divided and volatile.
The March 1989 edition of the magazine Pacific Islands Monthly went to press with an unprecedented editorial directly attacking its rival Islands Business. The leader accused IB of demeaning the standard of journalism in the region and using invective and distortion in a personal vendetta against Robie.
New Zealand journalist David Robie . . . target of a Pacific vendetta. Image: CP
Robie, 43, has edited newspapers in Australia and South Africa, and wrote for Agence France-Presse in Paris. He has covered Pacific affairs for New Zealand, British and Australian publications for the last decade and has written two books on the region.
Another, Blood on their Banner, on nationalist struggles in the Pacific, is due for international publication in August.
Now writing for Pacific Islands Monthly, he was formerly a correspondent with IB for eight years and during that time covered many of the region’s big stories including the 1984 insurrection in New Caledonia and the Rainbow Warrior affair.
Parted company
IB and Robie parted company in early 1988 but relations between them hit an all-time low later in the year after he wrote a feature analysing Pacific media politics (“The muzzling of the Pacific press?” New Zealand Monthly Review, December 1988) in which he described IB as a “mouthpiece” for the Rabuka regime.
The article reported how media corporations owned by Rupert Murdoch and French mogul Robert Hersant came to dominate the Pacific press, and how the Fiji coups had radically curbed press freedom.
Robie said IB eulogised military stongman Sitiveni Rabuka (the magazine made him Pacific Man of the Year, 1987), that publisher Robert Keith-Reid wrote articles many considered pro-coup propaganda and that the magazine hired an extreme right-wing columnist to cover New Caledonian affairs.
It was the hiring of David Los, a non-journalist who runs an English-language school and has since 1984 carried out a poison pen campaign against Pacific journalists he regarded as too sympathetic to Kanak nationalism in Noumea, that precipitated Robie’s split with IB.
In December 1987, IB published a long and vitriolic letter from Los attacking Robie, then one of the magazine’s senior writers, and mysteriously omitted to offer Robie a right of reply.
An apology of sorts was inserted in the next edition at the insistence of Robie’s lawyer but the magazine then engaged Los as a New Caledonian correspondent. Known to have close links with the local anti-independence ultra-right, Los’s contributions are generally sarcastic tirades against the Kanak independence movement which he is fond of describing as “terrorist”.
Robie resigned soon after and began writing for the rival, Murdoch-owned PIM.
He alleges IB has continued to to publish his material and photographs in breach of copyright, that the magazine owes him more than F$3000, and that it has failed to return him more than 70 photographs it holds on file. These allegations were the target of IB’s successful legal threat and were subsequently removed from the PIM editorial.
Filed legal action
On the same day Robie filed legal action seeking payment and return of the photographs.
Blood on their Banner(1989) . . . controversial criticisms of some sections of the Pacific media. Image: Zed Books
But the dispute flared again when Robie’s article on the muzzling of the Pacific press was published. IB reproduced the article in its January 1989 edition, in breach of copyright, and interspersed three opinion pieces devoted to criticising Robie: by IB publisher Robert Keith-Reid, editor Peter Lomas, and columnist David Los. In all, the spread took five pages.
Keith-Reid alleged Robie was anti-American, anti-French, anti-Fiji coup, and had waged a campaign against IB. In reply to Robie’s allegation that the magazine was a mouthpiece for Rabuka, Keith-Reid wrote that “Except for four days’ imprisonment and some subsequent harassment and threats experienced by the publisher, there has been absolutely no attempt by authorities in Fiji to censor or interfere with the publication of this magazine.”
Lomas questioned Robie’s integrity, accused him of being blinkered, and insinuated he could not translate French. Robie lived and worked in France and covered French Pacific affairs for several years.
Los concluded his contribution with this extraordinary threat: “May I suggest that Robie’s little game has gone too far and that a legal process has been set in motion in Noumea that may give him a chance to see the inside of a prison if he cares to set foot in New Caledonia again.”
PIM responded to this attack on one of its writers, protesting in a full-page editorial that “the pages and editorial resources of an established production should be abused in a personal vendetta which, to be frank, fails to address (Robie’s) criticism.”
PIM called IB’s “profile” on Robie a “sad and embarrassing reflection on Pacific journalism” and said that it would continue to publish Robie’s work.
‘Best correspondent’
John Richardson, who was editor of IB from 1983 to 1987, also protested that “attack” on Robie, saying as far as he was concerned Robie was the magazine’s “best correspondent by far and the only one prepared to cover difficult and dangerous stories”.
He disagreed that Robie was a “leftist”, as had been alleged. Robie, he wrote, was in fact “a liberal with no political affiliations whatsoever. What he does possess, however, is a sharp awareness of what is unjust. This is vital to any journalist worth his salt.
Robie himself said it was scandalous that IB could “wage a malicious vendetta like this against a journalist and then gag a rival magazine from trying to expose the truth in an editorial”.
He said it was distasteful when a journalist had to resort to legal remedies but “the degree of malice shown by IB, towards me has left me no choice”. Robie is believed to be filing a defamation action against IB.
“The bizarre events of the last few months just endorse the theme of my article about the threats to press freedom in the Pacific.”
This article was first published in the New Zealand Journalist in April 1989. Harry Stoner was the alter ego of Phil Twyford, then a specialist Pacific Affairs writer for the Auckland Star and president of the Auckland metropolitan branch of the NZ Journalists Union. In May 1989, Robie filed a defamation writ before the Fiji High Court seeking damages against Islands Business, Keith-Reid, Lomas and Los. It eventually lapsed because Robie was living in NZ then Papua New Guinea at the time.
Journalist, editor and academic David Robie . . . eyed for the University of the South Pacific senior journalism post. Image: PNG Attitude
Fiji’s Sunday Post
Controversial New Zealander David Robie could be appointed to head the University of the South Pacific’s growing journalism programme.
Some USP academics not connected with the journalism programme are pushing for his appointment ahead of a well qualified candidate from within the region.
Robie’s career as a freelance journalist [and former newspaper, magazine and news agency editor in Australia, France, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and South Africa] and then academic has been dogged by controversy.
His style of journalism has been strongly criticised by several leading Pacific Islands journalists.
He has clashed with a number of Pacific Islands news organisations.
Uni Tavur . . . the masthead of the award-winning student journalist newspaper supervised by David Robie.
Robie at present heads the University of Papua New Guinea journalism programme [where the student journalist newspaper he supervises, Uni Tavur, recently won the top award in the annual Journalism Education Association of Australia and the Pacific (JERAA)].
Robie is known to have close connections with activist organisations such as Greenpeace and was involved in efforts from New Zealand to set up [journalist] trade unions in the Pacific Islands.
The position of journalism coordinator and senior lecturer at USP will become vacant at the end of this year.
This is when the programme’s founder, François Turmel, returns to Europe after completing his assignment to set up the programme.
Turmel’s services were provided to USP through one of France’s leading journalism schools, ESJ Lille, and funding from the French government.
His replacement was expected to be named at a meeting at USP yesterday.
Then position was expected to be offered to a well-qualified regional candidate, according to sources on the campus who asked not to be named.
But several academics who support Robie are understood to be strongly pushing for his appointment instead.
Robie visited Suva some months ago and is understood to have met with a number of USP people.
The people supporting him forced a postponement of the decision, according to the sources on the campus.
The well qualified regional candidate is Sarita Singh, who has spent more than 20 years as a newspaper and radio journalist in Fiji.
Singh went on to study for and gain extensive academic qualifications at leading universities in Britain and the United States in recent years.
They include a master’s degree in journalism.
She is believed to now have the best academic qualifications among Pacific Islands journalists.
The region’s main news media body, the Pacific islands News Association (PINA), earlier wrote to the university over the appointment of Turmel’s replacement.
PINA urged the university to appoint a candidate from the region if there was someone qualified.
PINA’s members have previously called for the appointment of more Pacific Islanders to such positions.
This unsigned article was widely believed to have been written by the then PINA coordinator, Peter Lomas, with an undisclosed vested interest. David Robie, who was duly appointed and held the post for five years 1998-2002, wrote about these issues in his 2004 book Mekim Nius: South Pacific Media Politics and Education.
Controversial journalist, Fiji’s Sunday Post, 9 November 1997.
Part of the cover of Ting Ting Bilong Mi, Campion Ohasio, Pacific Journalism Review, 1996.
Edited by David Robie | Cartoons by Campion Ohasio
Twenty five years ago in Melbourne I encountered a young cartoonist in Melbourne with a flair and panache that was remarkable. His name is Michael Leunig. At the time I was editor of the Sunday Observer and I felt Michael was destined for an astounding future. His distinctive whimsical and poetic style — Barry Humphries once described it as “murky, melancholy and marvellous” — eventually took him to the top of Australian cartooning. His socially aware messages and his characteristic flippant duck were a remarkable antidote to the humourless puritans of the era. He once drew me his characteristic gallivanting duck balancing a teapot on its head as I left Melbourne for greener pastures.
A 1970 Leunig cartoon given to David Robie. Cartoon: Michael LeunigTing Ting Bilong Mi : Cartoons by Campion Ohasio, Pacific Journalism Review, 1996.
Now I have encountered another cartoonist, this time from the Solomon Islands, who has also impressed me. And in an environment where cartoonists are rare and an endangered species. Campion Ohasio, who joined our journalism course [at the University of Papua New Guinea] in 1993 as a young 22-year-old from Nariekeara village in South Malaita, was deceptively quiet at first. But his trenchant abilities with the pen soon became apparent — in spite of the fact that he has never had formal art lessons. Compared with the subtleties of a Leunig, Ohasio has a certain rawness in his style. But his directness is refreshing in Island societies that are often culturally reluctant to get to the point, let alone be brutally honest.
At first Campion Ohasio, encouraged by senior Post-Courier journalist Leigh Martin who was at the time tutoring journalism students on Uni Tavur, contented himself with local issues on campus at the University of Papua New Guinea. The issues were plentiful and painful, and Ohasio treated them robustly. But by the end of 1993, he was restless for more challenges and I persuaded him to tackle national — and Pacific — issues. And before the end of the following year, Ohasio was also making his mark with regional issue cartoons. He developed a “Class of 93” strip, featuring Tome and his dog friend, Spotty. “The experience,” he says, “has been one of most rewarding things that have happened to me as an overseas student studing and living in PNG.”
Tome and Spotty. Cartoon: Ohasio Campion
Before cartooning for Uni Tavur, he had been doing some editorial cartoons for the Solomons Voice, one of the weekly newspapers in Honiara where he worked in 1992 as a graphic artist and reporter. “I had limited knowledge about what cartooning is really all about,” Ohasio admits. “I like reading cartoons and I usually wonder how cartoonists think up ideas fast to meet deadlines — especially on the daily papers.”
The Independent’s Jada Wilson and the popular “Grassruts” strip creator, Bob Browne, now a lecturer at the university’s Creative Arts Faculty, have influenced Ohasio, yet he has been developing his own irreverent style. Environmental and logging cartoons, along with land rights and French nuclear tests, have often been at the forefront of his work.
“Cartoonists probably are the only artists in the world who are expected to come up with a creation every day, or week depending on which media organisation they are attached to,” says Ohasio. “In my case it has been every two weeks. It is definitely not an easy job — but a country such as PNG, or in Melanesia, or even in the wider South Pacific context,
there are more things going wrong than right. A perfect setting for a cartoonist. As Sudhir Tailang, one of India’s rising cartoonists, says: ‘Cartooning is an art of dissent, of protest. Cartoonists look for negative things and find plenty of them. There’s no place for a cartoonist in Utopia.'”
I have to admit there were frustrations at times, as is often the case for people with creative abilities. Campion Ohasio’s definition of editorial deadlines was unnerving, even by “Pacific time” standards. Many were the times when we were about to go to press with me tearing my hair out (or, at least, what I have left) trying to find “Campi”. But he would always turn up just in the nick of time and with the cartoon theme spot on to the issue at hand. Once I had literally given up after sending out our “press gang” to locate Campion. In fact, I had made arrangements to reprint an earlier cartoon. However, as I walked out my office door to leave for the Post-Courier, the Pacific’s largest daily, which prints Uni Tavur, Ohasio arrived breathless — and with a scathing cartoon about Ok Tedi mine, our front page lead. But in the end it was always a pleasure to have “Campion’s Comment” and another instalment in the Class of 93 . . . or 94 . . . or 95 . . . in print.
Ohasio, by Ohasio, 1996.
Campion Ohasio is the third-born of a family of six children. Throughout his schooling he never had art lessons. However, his artistic talents and motivation steered him towards his ambitious dream. During secondary schooling at St Joseph’s, Tenaru, he never had any art lessons yet his work was soon recognised by staff. He was given the job of illustrating the school magazine. In 1986, he won a cultural exchange opportunity to visit museums and art galleries in Brisbane and Canberra. Two years later he made another visit to Australia for the World Expo exhibition in Brisbane. In 1989, he sought a scholarship for an art school but his requests fell on deaf ears.
Ohasio ended up studying journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1991 — the year the campus was closed for a semester because of student protests over a controversial pay rise for MPs. Why didn’t he get a chance on a creative art course? The Solomon Islands government only provides scholarships for economics, accounting and science students. Unfair, says Ohasio. But, as he points out to other students, “You don’t have to go on an arts course to become an artist — you just have to look and learn.”
“Uni Tavur, 21 July 1995: French nuclear testing in the South Pacific has always been opposed by the South Pacific countries. Here is how I saw the attitude problem of the French towards the small Pacific nations. They claimed their testing was safe and they kept pushing their nuke tests down our throats because they knew we could not stop them. All we can do is write protest letters and carry out peaceful demonstrations.” (p. 85). * France ceased Pacific nuclear tests the following year — 1996.
When he was profiled for Uni Tavur by a Milne Bay journalism student colleague, Rex Matthew (who tragically died aged 22 in May 1995 from kidney failure), Ohasio said he was keen to set up his own comics company in the Solomon Islands. A leaf out of Bob Browne’s Grassroots comic books. “After all, my journalism experience would be of great help to me when I start the comic company,” he said.
The day before Ohasio left for Honiara, he showed me the roughs for his new strip character, Toka. I guess Toma and Spotty will be taking a back seat these days. And our readers will miss them in Uni Tavur. But as Conman — the real one, our “stroppy” gossip columnist — would say: NOKEN WARI. CAMPION WILL BE BACK. LUKIM YU.
David Robie Port Moresby
This is the introduction to Tong Ting Bilong Mi, the collection of Ohasio’s cartoons published by Pacific Journalism Review. See the book collection online here.
Kia ora tatou and welcome to journalist David Robie’s independent news media and politics commentary and analysis about Aotearoa/NZ and the Asia-Pacific region.
President Jacques Chirac’s controversial final round of nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls in 1995 unleashed an unprecedented storm of international protest. And dilemmas for journalists covering the riots in Pape’ete and the junkets by French authorities. The Vanuatu government banned news reports on protests. Journalist David Robie on board the original environmental campaign ship Rainbow Warrior — bombed by French secret agents a decade ago — recalls the events. He was later arrested by the French military.
By David Robie in Uni Tavur
Fernando Pereira was on board the Rainbow Warrior’s ill-fated voyage to the Pacific a
decade ago almost by chance. Campaign coordinator Steve Sawyer had been seeking a wire machine for transmitting pictures from the Marshall Islands and Moruroa Atoll.
Sawyer phoned Fiona Davies, then heading the Greenpeace photo office in Paris. But he said he wanted a machine and a photographer separately.
The 2005 Memorial Edition of David Robie’s book Eyes of Fire: Last Voyage of the Rainbow Warrior.
‘No, no … I’ll get you a wire machine,’ promised Davies. ‘But you’ll have to take my
photographer with it.’ Agreed. The deal would save Greenpeace’s campaign budget about
US$8000.
But it would also cost the Portuguese-born photojournalist Pereira his life. Less than
three months later he was dead — drowned as the Rainbow Warrior, bombed by French secret service agents, sank to the bottom of Auckland Harbour.
The ship’s successor, Rainbow Warrior II, returned to French Polynesian waters in 1995 for another dramatic tilt at the French over nuclear testing. Again, American Steve Sawyer was on board for the first round of protests in July.
For thousands of people in the Pacific, the French plan to resume nuclear tests this year reopened a deep and bitter wound.
New Zealand has long played a key anti-nuclear role. Twice in 1973 it dispatched frigates to the Moruroa Atoll testing zone to protest over atmospheric tests. A World Court case filed jointly with Australia forced France to switch to underground tests the following year.
Yet, in spite of persistent small boat protests over ensuing years, it was not until a decade ago that this major act of French state terrorism in New Zealand’s largest port suddenly projected nuclear tests at Moruroa firmly into the international limelight.
“A photographer’s date with a nuclear death”, PJR, November 1995.
Irony of the saboteurs
The night was chilly as the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior lay moored at Auckland’s
Marsden Wharf on Wednesday, 10 July 1985. It had arrived in New Zealand from Vanuatu three days earlier — a week after President Haruo Remeliik had been assassinated in Belau.
Greenpeace campaigners were preparing the former North Sea fishing trawler for the environmental group’s biggest-ever protest voyage to Moruroa Atoll, one which they hoped
would embarrass France over nuclear testing even more than the many brave forays of the yacht Vega. On board, supporters celebrated the 29th birthday of Steve Sawyer, the American co-ordinator of the Pacific Peace Voyage.
Unknown to the Greenpeace activists, two frogmen, French secret agents Jacques Camurier and Alain Tonel, had set off in an inflatable dinghy across the 2km stretch of the misty harbour from Mechanics Bay. It was ironic that the saboteurs were using a French-made Zodiac — the craft used by marine commandos to chase the Vega in 1973 (when they bludgeoned David McTaggart, Greenpeace founder in the Pacific), and later adopted by the Greenpeace “commandos of conservation” in dramatic campaigns against nuclear waste dumpers and whalers.
Camurier and Tonel crouched low into the icy breeze as they motored slowly across the harbour. It was bitterly cold, even in their waterproof jackets and wetsuits. Stowed on board the grey-and-black craft were two explosive packs wrapped in plastic, a clamp, rope, and the rest of their scuba gear — including two rebreather oxygen tanks, which did not release telltale bubbles underwater.
It was about 8.30 pm when they were close enough to switch off the little four horsepower Yamaha motor and paddle towards the Rainbow Warrior’s berth. They moored the
Zodiac to a sheltered wharf pile. So far, so good. It was just as they had rehearsed this phase of the so-called Operation Satanic at their Aspretto base in Corsica, France.
Donning their flippers, oxygen tanks and masks, Camurier and Tonel slipped into the inky water. Then they reached over the side of the inflatable to grab the bombs, the heavier of which weighed 15 kilos. They both swam underwater with the bombs, clamp and rope to the stern of the Rainbow Warrior.
Tonel attached the smaller, 10 kilo bomb to the propeller shaft; Camurier fixed the clamp on to the keel and ran out of rope to pinpoint a spot to attach the larger bomb next to the engineroom.
The hull explosive would sink the ship; the propeller mine would cripple it. Both bombs were timed to explode in just over three hours, at 11.50 pm. The explosives laid, the frogmen headed back to their hidden Zodiac. The hardest part of their mission was over.
The first blast ripped a hole the size of a garage door in the engineroom. The force of the
explosion was so powerful that a freighter on the other side of Marsden Wharf was thrown five metres sideways. As the Rainbow Warrior rapidly sank until the keel touched the harbour floor, the shocked crew scrambled on to the wharf.
But Fernando Pereira dashed down a narrow stairway to one of the stern cabins to rescue his expensive cameras. The second explosion probably stunned him and he drowned with his camera straps tangled around his legs.
I had been on board the Rainbow Warrior for 11 weeks, and my cabin was opposite Pereira’s. But I had left the ship three days earlier, on arriving in Auckland, to return to my Grey Lynn home. A planned visit to the ship that night with my two sons and their Scout troop had been cancelled at the last moment.
When the Rainbow Warrior was refloated and towed to the Devonport Naval Base dry dock, I discovered my old cabin had a huge bulge and hole where my bunk had been. My passport had been earlier recovered by navy divers from the bridge. It sank with the ship.
A daughter’s plea
Fernando had fled Portugal during the colonial wars in Angola, Mozambique and East Timor
while he was serving as a military pilot. He settled in Holland, the only country that would grant him citizenship. An amusing, engaging and likeable environmental photojournalist, he joined the Amsterdam daily newspaper De Waarheid.
Fernando’s daughter, Marelle, then aged eight, in June 1995 appealed in the French newspaper Libération to anybody who was involved in the bombing operation to tell her fully what had happened. “Now I am 18, I am an adult and I think by now I have the right to know exactly what events transpired surrounding the explosion which cost my father his life,” she wrote. She also travelled to New Zealand to interview former Prime Minister David Lange and Greenpeace campaigners who sailed on the Rainbow Warrior.
Fernando and I were among seven journalists accompanying the Greenpeace campaigners — he was also a crew member; the rest of us were independent reporters, filing for Australian, British, French, Japanese, New Zealand and Pacific news media. Our task was to travel to the Marshall Islands to report on the evacuation of the stricken islanders from Rongelap Atoll.
The Rongelap people had been contaminated by radioactive fallout, three decades earlier, in the most tragic disaster of American atmospheric tests of the 1950s — the 15-megaton Bravo H-bomb on Bikini Atoll, on 1 March 1954.
The 1985 ‘Rainbow Warrior’ crew .. . and a journalist: Clockwise, from left: Davey Edwards, chief engineer (UK); Marshallese traveller; Nathalie Thomas Mestre, Cook (Switzerland); Martini Gotje, first mate (The Netherlands); Lloyd Anderson, radio operator (USA – in headband); Bene Hoffman, second mate (Germany); Peter Willcox, captain (USA); Bunny McDiarmid, deckhand (NZ); Hanne Sorensen, second engineer (Denmark); and David Robie, journalist (in headband – NZ). Sitting from left: Grace O’Sullivan, deckhand (Ireland); Marshallese traveller; Henk Haazen, third engineer (The Netherlands); and Marshallese traveller. (In front of Martini, partner of crew member Andy Biederman, ship’s doctor (Switzerland) – not present in the group shot). Image: Fernando Pereira.
French President Jacques Chirac’s decision to resume the tests so close to the 10th anniversary of the Rainbow Warrior bombing fuelled outrage in the South Pacific, reopened a deep wound and gave New Zealanders a feeling of déja vu. France says it needs the tests to maintain its nuclear deterrent, and will only conduct eight underground tests between this September and May 1996.
Chirac claimed the tests would have “strictly no ecological consequences”.
Since 1966, France has conducted 175 atmospheric and underground tests at Moruroa and its sister atoll of Fangataufa. The Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation says the tests have left a radioactive core in the extinct undersea volcano that forms the base of the atolls.
It said that although the radioactivity was probably sealed off from the surrounding seas for the time being, there was a serious danger of leakage over the next 500-1000 years. What worries scientists is that the debris of past explosions was a half-life of at least 10,000 years. Greenpeace studies have shown radioactivity in plankton found near Moruroa, and plutonium in seawater.
But most French health tests on the residents of French Polynesia are a military secret.
A decade after the bombing, the full reasons for the French sabotage operation in New Zealand are still unclear in spite of Paris eventually admitting responsibility after the cover-up was blown. A French government-ordered official inquiry headed by leading civil servant Bernard Tricot in August 1985 was widely rejected as a whitewash. While admitting French agents were involved, it cleared the government of ordering the sabotage.
However, in September, after further revelations of French involvement, Prime Minister Laurent Fabius admitted on state television that the French secret service DGSE had indeed sunk the Rainbow Warrior, and it had been covered-up. Defence Minister Charles Hernu was forced to resign and the DGSE chief, Admiral Pierre Lacoste, was sacked.
Complicated plot
The scandal, dubbed “Underwatergate”, was a public relations disaster for France while
Greenpeace’s membership and finances soared. Thirteen secret agents — one of them infiltrating the Auckland office of Greenpeace — were used in the operation.
One DGSE agent, tough former commando Christine Cabon, alias Frederique Bonlieu, made herself at home with Greenpeace and fed information about the Moruroa plans to her Paris headquarters.
The plot by the DGSE — codenamed Operation Satanic — was complicated. A Zodiac and
Yamaha outboard motor were flown from Britain to New Caledonia. The bombs and diving equipment were obtained in Noumea and hidden on board a chartered 11-metre yacht, the Ouvéa.
Four secret agents — Chief Petty Officer Roland Verge, petty officers Gerald Andries and Jean-Michel Barcelo, and “freelance physician” Dr Xavier Maniguet — posed as tourists on a mid-winter diving voyage to New Zealand. A second team of agents flew into Auckland from London posing as Swiss tourists on their honeymoon. They were Major Alain Mafart, deputy commander of France’s Aspretto combat diving base, and Captain Dominique Prieur with the “married” name of Turenge.
Eight days before the Rainbow Warrior arrived in New Zealand on 7 July 1985, Operation
Satanic’s chief, Colonel Louis-Pierre Dillais (alias Jean-Louise Dormand), flew into Auckland
from Los Angeles. He booked into a Kingsgate Hyatt hotel room with a birds’ eye view of the environmental ship’s berth.
During the next two weeks, the Ouvéa crew played out a Jacques Tati-like farce, seducing
women and leaving obvious clues to their presence from Whangarei to Auckland. But they
eventually linked up with the Turenges, and the bombs and sabotage gear were handed over.
A third team of two divers, Camurier and Tonel, flew into Auckland a few hours before the Rainbow Warrior arrived in Auckland from Vanuatu. Both men had false passports and claimed to be physical education instructors at Paofai Girls’ College in Pape’ete. Their task was to mine the ship.
After planting the bombs, Camurier was spotted by yachtsmen vigilantes on the lookout
for petty thieves. He was loading bags into the Turenges’ rented campervan. The car number plate, LB8945, was jotted down and two days after the Rainbow Warrior was sabotaged the fake honeymooners were detained by police on false passport charges.
Evidence points to France
Evidence quickly pointed to French responsibility for the sabotage. Police flew to Norfolk Island to question the Ouvéa crew on their return voyage to Noumea. Although they had strong suspicions, the police did not have enough evidence for arrests. By the time the police got their act together, the Ouvéa had vanished. It had apparently been scuttled in the Coral Sea and the crew (apart from Dr Maniguet, who had earlier flown through Sydney) were picked up by the nuclear-powered submarine Rubis which took them to Tahiti.
Dillais, Camurier and Tonel posed as tourists in the South Island before quietly slipping out of New Zealand two weeks later.
Meanwhile, the French government “denounced” the sabotage and strongly denied any
involvement. French press reports claimed the saboteurs were South African mercenaries, white New Caledonian anti-independence extremists or British agents — anything to divert attention away from French involvement.
The dead photographer, Pereira, was claimed to be a KGB agent and the ship was said to be carrying secret espionage equipment — claims which I found laughable after having lived on board for so long. The Turenges were charged with murder and arson but they eventually pleaded guilty to manslaughter and wilful damage.
On 22 November 1985, Chief Justice Sir Ronald Davison sentenced them to 10 years’ imprisonment.
Faced with steadily deteriorating relations with France after the Rainbow Warrior bombing and threats to the country’s trade future, the New Zealand Government sought international mediation. Then United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar ruled in June 1986 that France must make a formal apology for the attack and pay $13 million in compensation in return for a three-year deportation of Mafart and Prieur to Hao Atoll, a military base in French Polynesia.
Greenpeace was warded $8 million compensation from France by the International
Arbitration Tribunal. The environmental movement finally towed the Rainbow Warrior to New Zealand’s Matauri Bay and “buried” it off Motutapere in the Cavalli Islands on 12 December 1987.
But the affair did not end there. The same day the French government told New Zealand that Mafart had a serious “stomach complaint” and repatriated him to Paris in defiance of the terms of the United Nations agreement and protests from Prime Minister Lange’s government.
Mafart was smuggled out of Tahiti as a carpenter called Serge Quillan on a fake passport on 12 December 1987 — hours before New Zealand was told he was being repatriated. Prieur was repatriated in May 1988 because she was pregnant. France ignored New Zealand’s protests over the blatant breach of the agreement.
In January 1987, I was detained at gunpoint by French troops near a military outpost, while on assignment in New Caledonia. After veiled accusations of my being a “spy” and being held for several hours along with a Kanak pro-independence local government official without charge at Canala gendarmerie, we were finally released. News media reports at the time linked my arrest with intimidation over my Rainbow Warrior book Eyes of Fire and my coverage of the Kanak struggle against French rule.
The Rainbow Warrior saga still leaves a bitter taste with most New Zealanders. Although
Lange’s Labour government was revered for standing firm on its nuclear-free policy, many New Zealanders have felt disillusioned with it for backing down under trade pressure and handing over the two jailed agents to French jurisdiction.
“You cannot sink a rainbow”, claimed a slogan peddled by nuclear-free campaigners in the months after the bombing. A cliche, but it’s true.
Dr David Robie lectures in journalism with UPNG’s South Pacific Centre for Communication and Information in Development. He was one of several journalists initially on board the Rainbow Warrior, remaining with it for 11 weeks until it arrived in New Zealand. His book Eyes of Fire was the only eyewitness account. This article was adapted from Robie’s report in Uni Tavur’s Insight Report, 21 July 1995.
