Asia Pacific Report – Evening Report

Case dismissed for pro-independence Kanak leader Christian Téin

Asia Pacific Report — Sat, 06 Jun 2026 06:55:02 +0000

Source: Asia Pacific Report

By Patrick Decloitre of RNZ Pacific

A court in Paris has dropped all charges against pro-independence Kanak leader Christian Téin and 13 others in their alleged role in the May 2024 civil unrest in New Caledonia.
In announcing their ruling on Friday in Paris to French national media, the panel of judges said they had based their decision on “insufficient” evidence (amounting to a “no case to answer”) for all of the 14 accused.
The ruling came after almost two years of investigation on this case, which followed the grave civil unrest that broke out in New Caledonia mid-May 2024.

At the time, Téin was the leader of a group called CCAT (Field Action Coordinating Group) which was set up by pro-independence party Union Calédonienne a few months earlier.
Public prosecutors had alleged at one stage that CCAT was an “organised structure” and that its “order givers” had carried out a plan to “destabilise (New Caledonia’s) economic, administrative and public State services.”
Following the latest ruling, Public Prosecution has lodged an appeal.
In June 2024, Téin and other CCAT leaders were arrested in Nouméa and flown to mainland France, where they served pre-trial jail terms of up to one year.
Téin was allowed to return to New Caledonia in December 2025.
Elected FLNKS president
In August 2024, while he was still jailed in Mulhouse, mainland France, he was elected in absentia as president of New Caledonia’s FLNKS (Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front).
The case, meanwhile, continued to be investigated, based on crime-related allegations ranging from being accomplice to murder attempt, destruction of goods and property, armed theft for cases alleged to have been committed in June 2024.
What was at the beginning a series of peaceful protests to oppose attempted changes to voter eligibility rules at local provincial elections later degenerated into riots and violent unrest, mainly in the capital Nouméa and its surroundings.
The 2024 marches were to protest against a plan from the French government of the time to modify the French Constitution and “unfreeze” the restrictions on the list of eligible voters at local provincial elections.
The indigenous pro-independence movement claimed these changes would effectively “dilute” the Kanak indigenous vote and gradually bring it closer to a minority.
Result of riots
As a result of the 2024 riots, 14 people died, several hundred businesses were targeted, looted and severely damaged or destroyed, several thousands of jobs were lost, New Caledonia’s GDP dropped by some 13.5 percent and the overall estimated material damage was about 2.2 billion euros (about NZ$4.4 billion).
However, following yet another Paris court ruling, the case took a significant turn when, in January 2025, the case was transferred from a panel of judges in Nouméa (New Caledonia) to a new group of magistrates based in Paris.
Reacting to the ruling on Friday, defence lawyers hailed “the considerable work from the Parisian investigating judges.”
“This is obviously a great satisfaction,” said the defence lawyers, while at the same time regretting that the initial procedure against Téin “was aimed at gagging a politician.”
One of Téin’s lawyers, Florian Medico, said earlier his client is “leading a political and Pacific struggle.”
Crucial election looming
The ruling comes in a particularly sensitive context as New Caledonia prepares to go to the polls on 28 June 2026 as part of provincial elections that will elect new members for all of the French territory’s three provinces (North, South and the outer Loyalty Islands).
The results will then proportionally determine the makeup of New Caledonia’s territorial Congress (Parliament), but also its “collegial” government and its president.
In May 2026, the French Parliament approved a partial change to New Caledonia’s “special electoral list” to allow people born there and who have now reached voting age to cast their vote.
Since the autonomy Nouméa Accord was signed in 1998, a special provision was in place to exclude voters born after 1998 from this “special list” specifically designed for the crucial local poll.
This partial “unfreezing” of the provincial electoral roll was met with dissatisfaction from both the pro-independence FLNKS (who said no such change could happen outside of a wider comprehensive political agreement on New Caledonia’s political future) and pro-France parties (who want New Caledonia to remain a part of France) who said the inclusion of “native” voters was not sufficient and that “spouses” of entitled voters should also be allowed to cast their votes.
The provincial elections, since the 2024 riots, were postponed three times.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/06/case-dismissed-for-pro-independence-kanak-leader-christian-tein/

Maher Nazzal: I walked through Palestine

Asia Pacific Report — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 11:20:04 +0000

Source: Asia Pacific Report

After years away, I have finally returned to Palestine, not just to visit but to reconnect with the land, the people, the memories, and the reality lived every day, writes Maher Nazzal.

COMMENTARY: By Maher Nazzal
Walking into Palestine is not just a journey across geography, it is a confrontation with memory, identity, and everything you were told, and everything you discover for yourself.
The first thing that stays with you is the wall. It does not feel like a distant structure you read about in reports; it rises suddenly into your view, stretching across the landscape like a scar that refuses to fade. Concrete slabs stacked high, covered in layers of paint, messages, names, grief, humour, and resistance. It divides not only land, but daily life.
On one side, movement feels controlled, measured, observed. On the other, life continues stubbornly, beautifully, and painfully.
The borders are not just lines on a map. They are checkpoints, gates, pauses in time. You wait. You are asked. You move forward or you don’t. People pass through them with a kind of practised patience that comes only from living a life where waiting is normal. And yet, even there, you see dignity in the eyes, in the silence, in the quiet determination to continue.
But Palestine is not defined by its restrictions.
It is defined by its people.
People who greet you as if you have always belonged there. People who carry history in their voices without needing to announce it. People who laugh in ways that refuse to be diminished. There is warmth that does not depend on comfort — it exists even in hardship.
You hear stories in taxis, in shops, at doorways, in fields. Stories of loss, yes, but also of endurance, education, love, and return.
And then there are the trees.
Olive trees are older than nations. Their trunks twisted like they have been holding secrets for centuries. Some stand alone on rocky hillsides, others form quiet groves that feel almost sacred. They do not move quickly. They do not need to. They belong in a way that cannot be negotiated. Each tree feels like a witness.
The rocks are everywhere grey, pale, sharp, ancient. They shape the hills, the terraces, the pathways. They feel like the bones of the land itself, exposed and unhidden. And between them, the soil dry in some places, fertile in others holds both struggle and promise.
And the sand… especially when the wind carries it. It softens everything. It moves across roads, settles on stone, touches skin without asking permission. It reminds you that land is never still. It remembers everything that passes over it.
To visit Palestine is to realise that it is not a place that can be reduced to headlines or borders or walls. It is a living presence, layered, wounded, resilient, and deeply human. It stays with you long after you leave, not as a memory you can place neatly in the past, but as something that continues to speak inside you.

Maher Nazzal is an activist, advocate and digital creator for a Free Palestine. He is a spokesperson for Palestine Forum of New Zealand and former co-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). This article was first published on Nazzal’s Facebook page and is republished with permission.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/maher-nazzal-i-walked-through-palestine/

Rabuka rules out military involvement with Israel in Mideast conflicts

Asia Pacific Report — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 07:35:05 +0000

Source: Asia Pacific Report

By Jake Wise in Suva

Fiji will not be “militarily involved” in any of the conflicts currently involving the State of Israel, says the country’s prime minister.
Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka made this reassurance yesterday, saying Fiji’s relationship with Israel would remain focused on development co-operation and strengthening bilateral ties, not military engagement.
Israel’s new embassy in Fiji — the first opened in Oceania — was officially opened yesterday with protesters against the diplomatic mission just across the street in the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC).

“We don’t want Israel in our country,” declared Shamima Ali, chair of the Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights and an organiser of the Fijians For Palestine protest, reports Mai TV.

“There is no doubt it is a genocide in Gaza” banner at the Fiji protest. Image: FijiOne TV screenshot APR

Protesters in New Zealand also picketed the Fiji High Commission in Wellington and the Fiji Consulate in Auckland.
Rabuka said Fiji’s interest in the partnership was based on development opportunities and the long-standing relationship between the two countries.
“We are looking at our own development and they are capable of giving us the development we need,” he said.
Training opportunities
He said Fijians had benefited from training opportunities in Israel over the years, including young people currently undergoing training there.
“Right now we have some young people undergoing training in Israel.
“Our own president did some training in his career path with the Native Land Trust Board at the time in Israel.”

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/rabuka-rules-out-military-involvement-with-israel-in-mideast-conflicts/

Indonesia has ‘kidnapped’ Pesta Babi star to cover up ecocide, claims ULMWP

Asia Pacific Report — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 23:50:03 +0000

Source: Asia Pacific Report

Asia Pacific Report

Indonesia has kidnapped and threatened Mama Yasinta Moiwend (Mama Sinta), one of the Marind tribe women featured in the controversial documentary Pesta Babi (Pig Feast), into denying the film and its message, claims a West Papuan advocacy group.
Pesta Babi, which focuses on the Merauke sugarcane megaproject and was premiered in New Zealand in March, exposes how Indonesia is destroying West Papua’s ancestral forest for profit.
“It is a moderate film, which does not show the real truth — that all West Papuans want freedom and independence instead of colonial ‘development’,” said the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) president Benny Wenda.

“Despite this, Indonesia has done everything they can to destroy it.”
Since the screenings of the film in New Zealand and Australia, the documentary has been widely shown in Indonesia and stirred a military crackdown with attempts to block it.
Partners in the production of the film include the Papuan media group Jubi, Greenpeace and Pusaka, a group committed to “fostering and advancing a just and equitable life” for Indigenous peoples and marginalised communities.
In a series of social media videos, Mama Sinta has publicly distanced herself from Pesta Babi, stating that she was “exploited by the filmmakers”.
She was later presented to a police station in Jakarta, where she filed charges against LBH Papua Merauke, an organisation involved in producing the film. Her family have stated they have not been able to contact her for the past week.

“Pesta Babi” (The Pig Party) . . . the West Papuan documentary poster for the film premiered in New Zealand in March. Mama Sinta is featured at top. Image: Jubi Media

‘Why change her views suddenly?’
“Mama Sinta has clearly been kidnapped by the colonial TNI. Why else would she be in Jakarta, away from the community she has spent her life fighting to protect? Why else would she change her views so suddenly?” asked Wenda.
Against her will, the Indonesian state had forced Mama Sinta to issue a statement retracting her involvement in the film, he said.
“For West Papuans, this is not a new phenomenon. Indonesia has always used any means they can to divide our spirit: bribery, threats, arbitrary arrests, beatings and torture.
“Those who they cannot silence they simply kill.
“Mama Sinta is just like the elders who were forced at gunpoint to vote against West Papuan independence during the Act of ‘No Choice’ [in 1969]. Merdeka remained in their hearts, even if they raised their hands against it.”
Wenda said Mama Sinta would have been afraid of “what would happen to her” if she did not agree to the TNI’s demands.
At a time when violence had ramped up across West Papua, with nearly 40 civilians “massacred in the past two months”, Papuans were aware of the dangers of speaking out.
“This is why she recanted.”
‘Terrified’ of public
“The Indonesian state response to Pesta Babi — from kidnapping its star to violently shutting down screenings of the film — clearly demonstrates their overwhelming fear of being found out.
“Indonesia is terrified that their own people, their youth and students, will discover what their government is doing to West Papua.
“The filmmakers deserve thanks for exposing Indonesia’s ecocide in Merauke. I call on them, and all Indonesian solidarity groups to stay strong: deepen your support for West Papua, oppose your country’s ongoing occupation, genocide and crimes against humanity.”

Film director Dandhy Dwi Laksono (right) and producer Victor Mambor talk to the audience at the premiere of Pesta Babi at the Academy Cinema in Auckland in March. Image: Asia Pacific Report

In an interview with RNZ Pacific last week, the film’s director, Dandhy Laksono, criticised the military crackdown over the documentary.
He said that Pesta Babi had been showing at about 1700 cinemas around Indonesia.
“We have recorded more than 30 incidents of the state apparatus stopping the screening — mostly by military, and then they are also using the civil servants — in the name of public order,” he said.
No public disorder
Laksono said there had been no public disorder from the film in parts where it had shown.
“It’s ridiculous, and thanks to the audience they defend the film quite hard, and they defend their rights to to watch and to absorb the information, about what has actually happened in West Papua.”
Wenda said the crackdown on the documentary was just one small example of Indonesia’s policy of repression in West Papua.
“They are only able to get away with their crimes because they have transformed West Papua into the Pacific North Korea: journalists are banned from entering, along with NGOs like Amnesty and the Red Cross.”
Six years had passed since Indonesia vowed to allow the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit West Papua — “and still they refuse access”.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/indonesia-has-kidnapped-pesta-babi-star-to-cover-up-ecocide-claims-ulmwp/

Palestine supporters stage pickets in 3 cities in Fiji, NZ protesting against new Israeli embassy

Asia Pacific Report — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 13:45:05 +0000

Source: Asia Pacific Report

Asia Pacific Report

Pro-Palestine protesters in Fiji and Aotearoa New Zealand staged pickets in three cities today in protest against Israel opening its first embassy in Oceania.
Before visiting Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar formally opened the embassy in the Fji capital, about 30 protesters gathered at the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (FWCC) — just across the street from the diplomatic mission — and 20 demonstrators picketed the Fiji consulate in the Auckland suburb of Mt Roskill calling for sanctions against Israel over its genocide in Gaza and invasion of Lebanon.
Other protesters picketed Fiji’s High Commission in the New Zealand capital of Wellington.

Fiji police “intervened” during the Suva protest organised by the NGO Coalition of Human Rights and the Fijians for Palestine groups, reports The Fiji Times.
The protestors were asked to stop chanting slogans, such as “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, and were criticised over their placards — such as “There is no doubt. It is a genocide in Gaza” and Palestinian flags.
The demonstration continued as a silent protest against the establishment of the Israeli diplomatic mission in Fiji, with protesters gathering to express their opposition to Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza.

Several reporters were at the picket scene in Suva as police spoke to FWCC coordinator Shamima Ali, who is chair NGO Coalition of Human Right, in what witnesses described as “harassment”.
Critical of Public Order Act
Fijivillage News reports Ali has criticised the use of Fiji’s Public Order Act against pro-Palestine protesters, claiming the legislation was again being used to restrict people’s rights to peaceful protest.
Ali said the government had acknowledged concerns surrounding the Public Order Act and its broad powers, but reforms had yet to be implemented.
She questioned the decision by police to intervene in what she described as a “peaceful demonstration”, saying protesters were exercising their democratic right to express opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza.

A Palestine flag and “no genocide” banner outside the Fiji consulate in Auckland’s Mt Roskill. Image: Asia Pacific Report

in New Zealand, the picket outside the Fiji consulate in Auckland was also peaceful and quiet apart from a short speech and many toots of support by passing motorists.
Several banners and many Palestinian flags dominated both sides of Stoddard Road outside the consulate in the Tulja Centre.
Banners declared “PM Rabuka stop voting for genocide”– in reference to the lead role that Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s Fiji has played a leading role in Pacific votes in support of an isolated Israel in the United Nations — and “Stop the genocide in Gaza: Sanction Israel now — boycott Israeli goods.”

The “PM Rabuka stop voting for genocide” banner at the Auckland protest. Image: Asia Pacific Report

An organiser, Barry Lee of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA), “Israel is regarded around the world as a war criminal, and there is ample evidence of their war crimes every day.
“Israel and the United States are the most warmongering states in the region. They have attacked all of their neighbours at least once, and they are currently killing people in Gaza, they have just stopped attacking Iran, and now they are attacking Lebanon as the United States is underwriting its supply of weapons to do so.”

PSNA spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said that while the rest of the world was distancing itself from Israel for its genocide in Gaza, illegal settlements on the West Bank and invasion of Lebanon, Fiji was deepening its ties with the Benjamin Netanyahu regime.
“It’s partly personal. Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka is grateful for Israeli support for his coup in 1987, when the rest of the world were distancing themselves from the Rabuka led military junta,” Tamimi said in a statement.

The Fiji Consulate in Auckland . . . venue of today’s protest. Image: Asia Pacific Report

“But it’s mostly the result of intense diplomatic activity by Israel throughout the Pacific, its determined attempts to reverse the trend around the world to isolate Israel and its institutions.”
“Israel is working with US Christian Zionists to make the Pacific an Israeli pond, to deliver votes in the United Nations and embassies in Jerusalem.”
In the September 2024 landmark United Nations General Assembly resolution to order Israel out of the Palestinian Occupied Territory within 12 months, no fewer than seven Pacific countries, including Fiji, voted against, out of a world total of 14 votes against.
Since US President Donald Trump had defied the United Nations and opened a US embassy in Jerusalem in 2018 during his his first term in the White House, only a handful of countries had followed.

The “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” banner removed by police at the Fiji protest. Image: Fijians For Palestine

“Since then, only Kosovo, Honduras and Guatemala have joined the US. That is, except for the Pacific — Papua New Guinea and Fiji are now in Jerusalem and they are soon to be joined by Samoa,” Tamimi said.
“It’ll be Samoa’s only country post outside the Pacific. Is Israel paying for it?”
At a joint media conference in Suva with Rabuka before the formal opening of the Israeli mission in Suva, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar declared Fiji was a “true friend of Israel”, reports FBC News.
Sa’ar said the embassy would serve as a platform to turn diplomatic ties into practical partnerships, with a focus on sectors that directly supported Fiji’s development priorities.
He added that Israel was ready to share its expertise in water management, renewable energy, agriculture and technology — areas that he said were increasingly important for Pacific island nations facing climate and resource pressures.

A local family at the Palestine protest outside the Fiji Consulate in Auckland today. Image: Asia Pacific Report

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/palestine-supporters-stage-pickets-in-3-cities-in-fiji-nz-protesting-against-new-israeli-embassy/

Non-negotiable: Christopher Luxon says NZ’s nuclear-free stance not changing

Asia Pacific Report — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 11:05:05 +0000

Source: Asia Pacific Report

RNZ Morning Report

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon insists the government is not going to review New Zealand’s nuclear-free stance, and doing so would be detrimental to relations with other countries, according to a former defence minister.
However, the opposition is sceptical of the government’s commitment to the four-decade-old stance.
Defence Minister Chris Penk, speaking at a security summit in Singapore last week, said it would be helpful to have a conversation about nuclear propulsion, to the extent that it was different to nuclear weapons.

There was no policy along those lines, Penk said, but it would be “helpful” for the country to have “a conversation”, given Australia was slated to acquire three nuclear-powered submarines as part of the AUKUS deal.
“Traditionally the New Zealand public has been very sceptical about nuclear weapons, which might be an interesting conversation in terms of the extent to which that’s different to nuclear propulsion.”
New Zealand does not allow nuclear-propelled vessels into its waters, whether they carry weapons of the sort or not.
The Labour Party said the government needed to clarify its position. Coming after Christopher Luxon’s comments last week to the house supporting nuclear energy, the government seemed to be signalling a change of policy, Labour leader Chris Hipkins said.
‘Non-negotiable’
After becoming prime minister in 2023, Luxon said the nuclear ban was “non-negotiable”.
A spokesperson for Luxon at the weekend said that had not changed.
Asked on RNZ Morning Report on Tuesday if he thought it would be a “helpful” conversation to have, Luxon said “no”.
“Our nuclear-free position, I think, has had massive support across the country and it won’t be changing, and it certainly won’t be changing while I’m prime minister.”
Luxon suggested Penk “could have expressed himself better, but ultimately made the right point that there won’t be any change”.
Luxon said the question sometimes came up in relation to AUKUS, of which New Zealand had considered joining in a non-nuclear capacity.
“Australia doesn’t get its homegrown submarines until the mid-2040s and then it’s delivered through the 2050s and the 2060s,” Luxon noted.
‘No change, period’
Responding to a suggestion this meant a conversation would eventually be needed, Luxon said there was “no change to our nuclear-free position, period”.
ACT MP Cameron Luxton on Tuesday told RNZ’s First Up there were no plans to change New Zealand’s almost four-decade nuclear-free stance.
“Chris Penk’s made those comments and… the prime minister has quite clearly said that’s not on the table. And I think that’s a fair enough position,” he said.
“New Zealand has got a tradition of nuclear-free status. It’s not something we should be rubbing in the face of the world, but it is something that we should be respectful of that is a part of our tradition.”
The country has formally been a nuclear-free zone since the passing of the New Zealand Nuclear Free Zone, Disarmament, and Arms Control Act 1987. The closest it came to reversing course was when then-leader of the National Party, Don Brash, reportedly told US officials in 2004 the ban would be “gone by lunchtime” should his party be elected in 2005.
Former Defence Minister Wayne Mapp, who served under Prime Minister John Key, said any conversation was a “non-starter” and potentially even detrimental to our global relationships.
“Australia and New Zealand have already had a conversation on that,” he told Morning Report on Tuesday. “Australia does not expect to send its submarines into New Zealand ports. They know full well our policy.
“I recall from 2006 when John Key became our leader, one of the things we did as a party was to remove all doubt as to where National stood on this issue. And when we did that, our relationship — particularly with the United States — improved because they weren’t sort of niggling at us all the time to sort of review the policy.
“Once they knew where we stood we could then talk about the things we agreed on, not the things that we disagreed on.”
No nukes, no AUKUS — Labour
It was nothing new for the National Party, which had wanted to get rid of the nuclear-free policy for many years, Hipkins said.
“This is just the National Party doing what the National Party does. Don Brash said that if he’d been elected prime minister, nuclear free would be gone by lunchtime… this is just another example of that.”
Hipkins reaffirmed Labour’s position that New Zealand would not be part of AUKUS.
“It’s ultimately designed to bring nuclear power submarines into the Pacific — we don’t support that,” he said. “We don’t see that aligned with our strategic interests, and we don’t think New Zealand should be part of it.”
Pulling our weight
Penk said New Zealand was on track to meet its goal of doubling the defence budget to 2 percent of GDP. The war in Iran had highlighted the “perils of instability” and could lead the government to bring forward the timeline for reaching that goal, he said.
This came after US Secretary of War (formerly Secretary of Defense) Pete Hegseth accused New Zealand — among other nations — of “freeloading” off the US.
Luxon said he disagreed with Hegseth’s comments, and that New Zealand’s defence spending decisions were in its own interests and “not frankly for anyone else”.
Hipkins told Morning Report it backed the coalition government’s boost to defence spending.
“Most of what they’ve set out in the defence budget is stuff that Labour agrees with that largely builds on things that we were doing in government. We do have an aging defence force fleet of equipment. We do need to be doing more in that area.”
ACT’s Luxton backed the hike in military spending.
“We cannot continue to live down here in the beautiful South Pacific and not be aware of what risks and issues are developing in the world,” he told First Up.
“New Zealand needs to play our part, and that’s what an uplift in spending is doing… We’ve got a massive wet blue continent to keep an eye on, an EEZ that extends a long way out and covers a lot of the Pacific Ocean surface that we’ve got to monitor. So this is something that is not before time.”
‘Acting like partner’
He said as a partner in the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence network, New Zealand needed to be “acting like a partner”.
“We are not descended from fearful people. We have played a proud part in New Zealand and the history of the world defending liberal values, freedoms and decency. And we have to do the same in our world today because it’s not just us today, it’s our nation’s future that we need to look after.”
Mapp questioned whether such a large increase in spending was desired or even necessary. Hegseth wanted nations to spend 3.5 percent of GDP.
“To be honest, a lot of nations in the Asia-Pacific are not going to reach 3.5 percent because circumstances do not warrant it. This particular administration in the United States, that is, how long are they going to be around for with that level of expectation?
“The Asia-Pacific is in a different set of circumstances to Europe, for instance, where they have a major ongoing war, Ukraine, and it obviously leads to a different set of expectations. Our situation is very different to that.”
He did however note New Zealand had a larger than usual area to patrol with only two frigates.
“A lot of the time that means we have zero frigates.”
Hipkins dismissed Hegseth’s demands.
“New Zealand should be judged based on the contribution it makes around the world, not how much we spend.”
Penk last week said replacement options for the two aging vessels were being looked into.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/01/non-negotiable-christopher-luxon-says-nzs-nuclear-free-stance-not-changing/

Fiji police question protesters over picket against opening of Israel embassy

Asia Pacific Report — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 07:00:05 +0000

Source: Asia Pacific Report

Fijivillage News

A protest led by the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre was held at their office today — located opposite FHL Tower where the new Embassy of Israel was due to be opened later in the day.
Police visited the centre and spoke to coordinator Shamima Ali.
The protest was taking place while similar pickets were being held at the Fiji consulate in Mt Roskill, Auckland, and Embassy in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand.

When Fijivillage News questioned police, they said they were at the scene and had advised those present that they could not conducting any protest in a public place.
Ali has criticised the use of the Public Order Act against pro-Palestine protesters, claiming the legislation was once again being used to restrict people’s rights to peaceful protest.
Ali said the government had acknowledged concerns surrounding the Public Order Act and its broad powers, but reforms had yet to be implemented.
She questioned the decision by police to intervene in what she described as a peaceful demonstration, saying protesters were exercising their democratic right to express opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“Stop #Zionism poisoning the Pacific” rallies in #Fiji & #Aotearoa today protesting against #Israel opening its first embassy in Oceania on a controversial new #diplomacy bid to “win friends” for the rogue pariah nation. #asiapacificreport #embassyprotest https://t.co/cUmFowKvDl pic.twitter.com/uFwJP2paik

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) June 2, 2026

‘Threat to public safety’
Ali claimed police informed protesters that they were considered a “threat to public safety” under an assessment made by a police officer.
She challenged that assessment, saying the group consisted of men, women and children participating in a peaceful gathering.
She also criticised the deployment of police resources to monitor the protest, arguing that law enforcement attention should be directed towards more pressing public safety concerns.
Despite being instructed to stop chanting and remove “certain banners”, Ali said protesters intended to continue their demonstration.
She alleged that police specifically objected to banners carrying the slogan “from the river to the sea”, which has been used by pro-Palestinian groups around the world to support self-determination.
Ali also questioned the Fiji government’s position on Israel and claimed there had been insufficient public consultation on decisions relating to Fiji’s engagement with the Middle East country.
She maintained that the protest would continue peacefully and called for the Public Order Act to be reviewed or repealed.
Republished from Fijivillage News with permission.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/02/fiji-police-question-protesters-over-picket-against-opening-of-israel-embassy/

Pro-Palestinian activists plan protest against ‘Israeli pond’ diplomacy push in Pacific

Asia Pacific Report — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:00:06 +0000

Source: Asia Pacific Report

Asia Pacific Report

Israel is working with US Christian Zionists to make the Pacific “an Israeli pond” to help deliver votes in the United Nations, warns the advocacy and protest movement Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).
National spokesperson Rinad Tamimi said in a statement today that PSNA would picket the Fiji High Commission in Wellington and Consulate in Auckland tomorrow at 12.30pm in protest over Israel opening its first Pacific Islands Embassy in the Fiji capital Suva later on Tuesday.
Tamimi said PSNA was acting in solidarity with a call for support from the Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network (Fijians4Palestine) in Fiji.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar arrived in Fiji today and is scheduled to cut the ribbon to open the embassy at 5pm.
Tamimi said that while the rest of the world was “distancing itself from Israel for its genocide in Gaza, illegal settlements on the West Bank and invasion of Lebanon,” Fiji was “deepening its ties with the [Benjamin] Netanyahu regime”.
“It’s partly personal. Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka is grateful for Israeli support for his coup in 1987, when the rest of the world were distancing themselves from the Rabuka-led military junta,” Tamimi said.
“But it’s mostly the result of intense diplomatic activity by Israel throughout the Pacific, its determined attempts to reverse the trend around the world to isolate Israel and its institutions.
‘Working with Christian Zionists’
“Israel is working with US Christian Zionists to make the Pacific an Israeli pond, to deliver votes in the United Nations and embassies in Jerusalem.”

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar (right) with Fijian national Fine Ditoka . . . due to open the Israeli embassy – first in the Pacific – in Suva on Tuesday. Image: The Fiji Times/FB

In the September 2024 landmark UN General Assembly resolution to order Israel out of the Palestinian Occupied Territory within 12 months, no fewer than seven Pacific countries, including Fiji, voted against, out of a world total of 14 votes against.
“It’s the same Pacific slant with embassies in illegally Occupied Jerusalem. The world would locate all their embassies in Tel Aviv because they didn’t recognise Israeli sovereignty over East Jerusalem.
“Then Trump opened a US embassy in Jerusalem in 2018.
“Since then, only Kosovo, Honduras and Guatemala have joined the US. That is, except for the Pacific — Papua New Guinea and Fiji are now in Jerusalem and they are soon to be joined by Samoa,” Tamimi said.
“It’ll be Samoa’s only country post outside the Pacific. Is Israel paying for it?”
According to the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS), Israel previously had an embassy in Fiji in the 1970s and 1980s. But this was closed in the 1990s due to budgetary cuts, and its role was replaced by non-resident ambassadors.
“Our affinity and affection to Israel actually predates our official establishment of ties over half a century ago and dates back to 1835 when Christian missionaries came to Fiji and taught the Bible,” said Fiji’s Ambassador to Israel Jesoni Vitusagavulu.
“We have a deep appreciation for Israel.”

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/01/pro-palestinian-activists-plan-protest-against-israeli-pond-diplomacy-push-in-pacific/

Israeli claims about an Iran ‘threat’ were always a lie. Now we have proof

Asia Pacific Report — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 06:10:04 +0000

Source: Asia Pacific Report

ANALYSIS: By Jonathan Cook

Could it be that Israel’s 30-year narrative about Iran — one that persuaded US President Donald Trump to wage a criminal and disastrous war of aggression — was always a fiction, an invention cooked up in Tel Aviv?
Far from Tehran posing an existential danger to Israel, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed for decades, might Israel’s real fear be that a stronger Iran would undermine its unique leverage over Washington, threatening its status as the region’s sole — and unmonitored — nuclear power?
Might large parts of the globe be facing economic meltdown simply so that Israel can remain the Middle East’s top dog — an unaccountable apartheid state committing genocide against the Palestinian people and ethnically cleansing southern Lebanon?

We got a definitive answer last week, care of The New York Times. It is an uncompromising yes to all of these questions.
The newspaper reported that Netanyahu not only mis-sold Trump on the idea of quick regime change in Iran following a short “shock and awe” bombing campaign. He also identified to the White House who was going to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme religious leader.
Extraordinarily, according to The Times, Netanyahu named the man for the job as former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The aim at the start of the air campaign was for Israel to kill Khamenei, then liberate Ahmadinejad from house arrest by striking the guards who were confining him.
Presumably, Ahmadinejad was then supposed to storm the citadel and seize the keys to the palace. But only Khamenei’s assassination went according to plan.
Ahmadinejad, who had reportedly been consulted on the scheme beforehand, is believed to have been injured in the Israeli strike near his home. He got cold feet, possibly suspecting he was being set up for assassination too, and went into hiding. His current whereabouts and medical condition are unknown.
Ultimate bogeyman
Neither US nor Israeli officials would comment to The Times on the alleged regime-change plot, a scheme that the newspaper called “audacious”. That is the understatement of all understatements.
The idea that Ahmadinejad had the popular support, let alone the religious authority and military muscle behind him, to take on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s crack military force responsible for protecting the clerical regime, is for the birds.
That anyone in the White House took this plan seriously, let alone acted on it, is a genuinely staggering notion. But the proposition that Ahmadinejad could retake the reins of power in Iran is possibly the least preposterous part of the scheme.

Fast forward two decades, and Netanyahu reportedly now thinks Ahmadinejad is the best person to lead Iran; the person for whom it was worth killing Khamenei
While younger readers may not recognise Ahmadinejad’s name, everyone else should. He made headlines on an almost weekly basis during much of his eight-year presidency, starting in 2005. Why? Because Israel turned him into the ultimate bogeyman.
After neighbouring Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was toppled and executed in 2006, following an illegal invasion by the US and Britain, Ahmadinejad was hyped as the new implacable threat to regional peace.
Claims about Ahmadinejad first breathed an illusory substance into Israel’s now-unchallenged script that a supposedly fanatical, deranged Iran would leave no stone unturned in seeking to destroy Israel. Ahmadinejad, we were told time and again, was seeking to pursue a nuclear bomb — even after Khamenei had issued a religious edict in 2003 strictly banning its development.
In 2006, Ehud Olmert, then the Israeli prime minister, warned the world that Ahmadinejad was a “psychopath of the worst kind”, adding: “He speaks as Hitler did in his time of the extermination of the entire Jewish nation.”
Olmert was echoing a panic-inducing campaign led by Netanyahu, then Israel’s opposition leader, that Iran needed to be attacked immediately to save Israel and the world.
“It’s 1938 and Iran is Germany,” Netanyahu told a meeting of American Jewish leaders that same year. “And Iran is racing to arm itself with atomic bombs.”
Of Ahmadinejad, he said: “Believe him and stop him… He is preparing another Holocaust for the Jewish state.”
Under Ahmadinejad, Iran was supposedly hellbent on destroying Israel, turning it into a giant Auschwitz. Also in 2006, Netanyahu told Israeli Army Radio: “Israel would certainly be the first stop on Iran’s tour of destruction.”
Ahmadinejad was so unhinged, Netanyahu said, that he would not stop at Israel’s eradication: “Iran is developing ballistic missiles that would reach America, and now they prepare missiles with an adequate range to cover the whole of Europe.”
‘Genocidal intent’
A short time later, Israel’s fear-mongering operation reached a crescendo in London.
Netanyahu told members of the British Parliament that Ahmadinejad had to be urgently brought before the International Criminal Court — the war crimes court in The Hague — for his “messianic apocalyptic view of the world”.
Irony of ironies, Netanyahu — who 20 years later is a fugitive from that same court, accused of crimes against humanity for starving the people of Gaza — emphasised Ahmadinejad’s supposed genocidal intent towards Israel.
“In the 1930s, too, no one believed that Hitler was capable of taking action because he didn’t explicitly talk about wiping out the Jewish people,” Netanyahu told British MPs. “In contrast, the Iranian president publicly announces his intentions and no one is trying to stop him.”
Michael Gove, a former Conservative cabinet minister who chaired the meeting, enthusiastically agreed, ignoring a confounding fact: that thousands of Jews have lived peacefully in Iran for centuries.
Gove told the meeting that Ahmadinejad’s “rhetoric is more than worrying, but tantamount to an incitement of genocide”.
Gove’s concern about genocide has not subsequently extended to Gaza. He has repeatedly denounced anyone, including legal experts and Holocaust scholars, who has noted Israel’s genocide there.
In the midst of the mass slaughter in Gaza, Gove even called for the Israeli military to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Smoke and mirrors
Two decades ago, the message from Netanyahu was clear: Ahmadinejad was so rabidly antisemitic that he deserved to be compared to Hitler.
Ahmadinejad was so eager to pursue a nuclear weapons programme that he was prepared to defy the country’s supreme religious leader. He was so mentally unstable that he was ready to use those weapons to exterminate Israel, even though such a move would ensure a retaliatory nuclear counter-strike on his own country.
Lest we forget, Ahmadinejad had a reputation for such ruthless crackdowns on political opponents that Amnesty International noted in 2014 that his rule had “sounded the death knell for academic freedom in Iran”.
Yet, fast forward two decades, and Netanyahu reportedly now thinks Ahmadinejad is the best person to lead Iran; the person for whom it was worth killing Khamenei, Iran’s most influential opponent of nuclear weapons.
The New York Times reports that in recent years, there were strong suspicions inside Iran that Israel, Britain and the US were cultivating ties with Ahmadinejad and those around him — suspicions that now seem to be confirmed by Israel’s apparent regime-change plan.
The newspaper further reports that Ahmadinejad had recently travelled to both Guatemala and Hungary, countries with very close ties to Israel.
Does any of this make sense? And yet for Western media, the fact that Netanyahu was championing Ahmadinejad as Iran’s saviour, and that the US administration wholeheartedly bought into this idea, is little more than “surprising”.
In truth, it wrecks Israel’s entire narrative about Iran. It is a telling reminder of the yawning gap between what we have been told about Iran for decades, and what has actually been going on.
Image and reality bear almost no resemblance to each other. This has all been smoke and mirrors.
‘Wiped off the map’
In my 2008 book Israel and the Clash of Civilisations, I pointed out that nothing Israel was telling us about its Middle Eastern rival could be accepted at face value — least of all Israel’s assertion that Ahmadinejad was a Jew-hating “new Hitler”.
Many of the claims promoted 20 years ago by Israel about Ahmadinejad’s genocidal intent stemmed from a mistranslation of a speech in which the Iranian leader had quoted the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
According to Western politicians and media, Ahmadinejad had called for Israel to be “wiped off the map” — widely portrayed as an ambition to launch a nuclear strike on Israel.

The disinformation about Iran should have been all too glaring back in 2006, had any of it been reported properly – just as it should be now
In fact, Ahmadinejad had been repeating Khomeini’s observation that Israel could not survive indefinitely in the form of an illegitimate Jewish supremacist state oppressing another people. He was pointing out that Israel’s days as a racist state were numbered, just as apartheid South Africa’s had been.
The sentiment behind Khomeini’s statement should be much clearer in the present circumstances, when it is Israel, not Iran, that has been busy wiping people off the map — in Gaza and southern Lebanon.
Similarly, Israel and its Western allies made a great deal of noise in 2006 when Ahmadinejad called what was widely misrepresented as a “Holocaust denial” conference in Tehran. In fact, Ahmadinejad had organised what was intended to be a provocative — and to some, offensive — stunt to challenge Western taboos about Israel and underscore the West’s hypocrisy towards Muslims.
Ahmadinejad’s point was twofold: firstly, if Muslims are not entitled to have their beliefs and sensitivities respected by Westerners — as evidenced by the 2005 “Danish cartoon affair” and the “free speech” defence for presenting caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad — why should Westerners expect their own sensitivities about Israel and the Holocaust to be exempt from challenge?
He also wanted to dissect the Western belief that someone else, the Palestinian people, should pay a heavy price, including decades of dispossession and abuse, for the West’s crimes against Europe’s Jews.
Horror show
The disinformation about Iran should have been all too glaring back in 2006, had any of it been reported properly — just as it should be now, two decades later, were Western journalists doing their job rather than acting as stenographers for Israel and the White House.
The lies, now as then, serve the same end: to justify crushing Iran — then through sanctions, later through the addition of illegal bombing — so that Israel’s right to trample over the lives of people across the region without consequence can be protected.
Iran, now refusing to release its chokehold over the Strait of Hormuz and the global supply of oil, is demanding that the price include an end to US backing for the Israeli-directed horror show in the Middle East.
Like a spoiled toddler, Trump is thrashing around — while cashing in on the volatility of the oil markets — trying to impose the old rules, when the terms of the confrontation are no longer under his exclusive control.
His latest tantrum — one cooked up in Tel Aviv as much as Washington — is that most Arab states, including Iran’s neighbours in the Gulf, be forced to sign the so-called Abraham Accords with Israel. This is being presented as the framework for a regional “peace deal” involving Iran.
In truth, it is the very opposite.
The accords are designed to cement Israel’s status as the Middle East’s top dog, subordinating Arab states’ interests to Israel’s, and thereby isolating Iran in the region and leaving the Palestinian people and Lebanon to a genocidal Israel’s mercy.
This is another swindle, like Trump’s “Board of Peace”, which dresses up US and Israeli criminal aggression and genocide as “peacemaking”.
What the past 20 years of lies and misdirections have sought to hide is a simple fact: it is not Tehran that is led by unhinged, genocidal megalomaniacs threatening the security of the region and the world. It is Tel Aviv and Washington.
Since the pair launched their criminal war of aggression against Iran three months ago, Tehran has shown restraint, acted with caution, and displayed a willingness to negotiate in good faith. Too bad there are no responsible adults on the other side with whom it can make a deal.
Jonathan Cook is a writer, journalist and self-appointed media critic and author of many books about Palestine. Winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. This article was first published by the Middle East Eye and reepublished with permission.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/01/israeli-claims-about-an-iran-threat-were-always-a-lie-now-we-have-proof/

French Constitutional Council approves changes to New Caledonia’s electoral roll

Asia Pacific Report — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 01:15:04 +0000

Source: Asia Pacific Report

By Patrick Decloitre, RNZ Pacific correspondent French Pacific desk

The French Constitutional Council has validated an adjustment to New Caledonia’s restrictions for their forthcoming provincial elections due to be held on 28 June 2026.
The adjustment will now allow more than 10,000 people to cast their votes in the French territory’s local elections.
The ruling from the French body last Thursday comes at the request of the French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu, after the amendments in the form of an “organic law”, were endorsed by both the National Assembly and the Senate.

The partial “unfreezing” of New Caledonia’s electoral roll mainly targets New Caledonia’s population who were born after restrictions were imposed as part of the implementation of the Nouméa Accord signed in 1998 and the organic law of 19 March 1999.
Under this “frozen” electoral roll, people described as “natives” (regardless of their ethnicity) who were born after November 1998 could not vote at the local (provincial) elections.
But since 1998, New Caledonia’s demographics have changed and a significant portion of the population was born there and has since reached the voting age of 18.
During parliamentary debates, Lecornu said that the partial “unfreezing” of New Caledonia’s electoral restrictions was to rectify “growing distortions” in New Caledonia’s electoral roll.
From 7 to 17 percent
According to latest statistics, the proportion of “native” people (from all ethnic groups) has grown from seven percent to 17 percent of the population – an estimated 10,500 people.
In its ruling on Thursday 28 May 2026, the Constitutional Council said issues at stake took into account the restrictions imposed by the Nouméa Accord (as enshrined in the Constitution) and the notion of respect for universal suffrage.
The Constitutional Council therefore “considered that the organic law did not disregard the guidelines of the Nouméa Accord and that it was in conformity with the Constitution”.
It concluded that the opening of the restrictions in the new organic law “did not ignore the orientations of the Nouméa Accord”, because the restrictions were still there and that being born in New Caledonia is an indication of a “long term establishment” in New Caledonia.
But it also underlined the necessity of taking New Caledonia’s demographic changes into account.
The change, the Council said, would mitigate the exemptions to the principles of universality and equality of the suffrage brought by the Nouméa Accord’s restrictions.
‘Spouses’ remain excluded
However, another piece of legislation, in the form of an amendment to the same text, was rejected by both Chambers of Parliament.
It aimed at including the “spouses” category in the “special electoral roll” (specifically designed for provincial elections).
The “spouses” category includes about 1700 people who are married to qualified voters — either by legal marriage or by way of a civil union pact (what the French civil status refers to as PACS) for a minimum period of five years.
During heated debates in Parliament earlier this month, pro-independence FLNKS MP Emmanuel Tjibaou repeated that New Caledonia’s electoral roll could not be modified “without the agreement of the colonised people” (the indigenous Kanak population) and that a prior “consensus on a comprehensive agreement” was required.
Lecornu said he was planning to bring New Caledonia’s politicians to negotiate a comprehensive agreement as early as July, straight after the crucial elections on 28 June 2026.
The French PM also promised a comprehensive agreement on New Caledonia’s political future would be finalised “by the end of this year”.
Local reactions
Following the Constitutional Council’s ruling, pro-France MP Nicolas Metzdorf reacted, saying this was “excellent news”, but deplored that “spouses” remained excluded from the vote.
“Shame on those who are hiding behind the law by not supporting [the spouses]. They are psychological hostages by the threat of violence. Our fight for a fully democratic New Caledonia is therefore not over,” he commented on social networks on Friday.
New Caledonia’s senator Georges Naturel (Les Républicains, right-wing), who was the mover of the motion in the French parliament, hailed the Constitutional Council’s ruling, saying the inclusion of “natives” was “a gesture of justice and democratic consistency”.
One of the leaders of moderate pro-independence group “UNI” (Union Nationale pour l’Indépendance, which split from FLNKS in 2024), Victor Tutugoro, said earlier in May the adjustment was a “wise decision” because it was in keeping with the spirit of the 1998 Nouméa Accord.
Those provincial elections are crucial in the sense that they will choose new members for New Caledonia’s three provincial assembles (North, South and the Loyalty outer islands) and then, proportionally, will determine the makeup of the territorial Congress and its “collegial” government, as well as its President.
The very issue of modifications to New Caledonia’s eligibility for voters was perceived as one of the main triggers that led to civil unrest in May 2024. The deadly riots casued 14 deaths, more than 2 billion euros (about NZ$3.9 million) in material damages, a drop of some 13.5 percent in the local GDP, as well as left thousands of people unemployed due to the destruction of hundreds of businesses.
New Caledonia’s provincial elections were postponed three times since 2024, mostly due to the unrest.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/01/french-constitutional-council-approves-changes-to-new-caledonias-electoral-roll/

Pro-Palestine groups plan coordinated protests in Fiji and NZ over Israel’s first Pacific embassy

Asia Pacific Report — Sat, 30 May 2026 11:20:04 +0000

Source: Asia Pacific Report

Asia Pacific Report

Pro-Palestine activist groups plan to simultaneously protest against the opening of the first Pacific embassy by Israel with pickets in the Fiji capital Suva and the New Zealand cities of Auckland and Wellington next week.
Fijians for Palestine and the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) are planning these coordinated protests in opposition to Tel Aviv opening the embassy in Fiji on Tuesday.
Ironically, the Fiji picket will be just across the road at the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre in downtown Suva with Palestinian flags “flying in the face of Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar”, according to organisers.

The opening is scheduled for 5pm on Tuesday and pickets will be happening at the same time at the Fiji Embassy in Wellington and also at the Fiji consulate in the Auckland suburb of Mt Roskill.
“The genocidal state of Israel is opening an embassy in Fiji’s capital, Suva,” said Fijians For Palestine in a social media post at the weekend. “Fiji cannot build its state on the graves of children. Fiji cannot develop on the blood of innocents. Free Palestine.”
The embassy launch in Suva follows Fiji controversially opening an embassy in Jerusalem last year in defiance of United Nations resolutions that have declared occupied East Jerusalem as part of the state of Palestine,
Fiji is regarded as a staunch supporter of Israel at the UN in the face the face of overwhelming resolutions against Israel.
Fiji move condemned
The Fiji role was condemned at a pro-Palestinian rally in Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau today.

PSNA’s Anna Lee (speaking) at an Auckland pro-Palestinian rally . . . responding to a call from Fiji activists. Image: Pacific Media Report

“PSNA is responding to a call from Fijians for Palestine, to protest against the opening in Fiji of the Pacific’s first Israeli embassy,” organiser Anna Lee told protesters.
“Israeli Foreign Minister, Gideon Sa’ar is scheduled to cut the ribbon in Suva to open Genocide Israel’s brand-new embassy at 5pm next Tuesday.
“The embassy opening represents a major advance for Israel’s determined attempts to reverse the trend around the world to isolate Israel and its institutions.”

The Fiji solidarity rally planned for Tuesday. Image: Fijians For Palestine

The embassy move represents a major diplomatic advance for Israel’s determined attempts to reverse the trend around the world to isolate Israel and its institutions.
In the September 2024 landmark UN General Assembly vote to order Israel out of the illegally occupied Palestinian Territory within 12 months, no fewer than seven Pacific countries — including Fiji — voted against out of a world total of 14. In favour were 124 countries out of 193 member states.
In the UNGA vote the following September on recognition of Palestine, Fiji abstained. However, five other Pacific countries comprised half of the 10 votes against — again alongside the United States and Israel. In favour were an overwhelming 157 countries (81 percent).
Bid to ‘cajole votes’
“There is a clear, and thus far successful, attempt by Israel to use the US brand of Christian fundamentalism, to cajole votes and embassies out of the Pacific,” said PSNA’s Lee.
“The Pacific is our backyard. Our protests will show Zionist Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka that Palestine has many supporters.”
According to The Fiji Times, the new Israeli embassy will mark a “significant milestone in the growing relationship between the two countries and strengthening Israel’s diplomatic presence in the Pacific region”.
“The embassy will provide Israel with a permanent diplomatic presence in the Blue Pacific, a region that has attracted increasing attention from global powers seeking influence through development assistance, climate initiatives, security partnerships and economic engagement,” the newspaper reported.
“The development follows Fiji’s opening of its embassy in Jerusalem last year, making it one of a small number of countries with an embassy in Israel’s capital.”
Israel later announced plans to establish a reciprocal diplomatic mission in Fiji in 2026, citing Fiji’s “consistent support for Israel in international forums, including the United Nations”.
The opening of the embassy is also being viewed as part of Israel’s broader effort to increase its engagement with Pacific Island nations amid growing geopolitical competition in the region.
Diplomatic, legal implications
Fiji’s decision to establish an embassy in Jerusalem last year drew criticism from Palestinian officials and local activist groups, who argued that the move carried diplomatic and legal implications because of the disputed status of the city.
Today’s Auckland rally also featured Global Sumud Flotilla humanitarian aid activists detained and tortured by the Israeli military last week, including Hāhona Ormsby and Mousa Taher, and speakers criticising New Zealand involvement alongside Israel in the RIMPAC 2026 military exercises due in Hawai’i next month.

Fijian protesters at a demonstration against Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians and genocide in Gaza. Image: Fijians For Palestine/FB

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/05/30/pro-palestine-groups-plan-coordinated-protests-in-fiji-and-nz-over-israels-first-pacific-embassy/

‘He’s Māori!’ Hāhona Ormsby – a New Zealander in the Israeli prison system nightmare

Asia Pacific Report — Fri, 29 May 2026 04:05:04 +0000

Source: Asia Pacific Report

SPECIAL REPORT: By Eugene Doyle

I interviewed several of the New Zealanders who, as members of the Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza, were taken hostage by the Israelis in international waters near Cyprus last week and moved to Israel.
The sadism and savagery of their mistreatment — clearly designed to intimidate and stop further attempts to open a humanitarian corridor — gave them a small taste of the network of torture camps that hold thousands of Palestinians in captivity suggestive of Dante’s Inferno.
Their ordeal lasted only four days. Repeatedly kicked, punched, sexually humiliated and beaten unconscious, the cruellest blow was that their own government refused to stand up for them.

Of the 430 activists from 60 countries, there were several who were raped and many who will carry injuries for the rest of their lives.
This is Hāhona Ormsby’s story:
Itamar Ben-Gvir himself spat at Hāhona Ormsby. Many will recall the footage of the Israeli National Security Minister swaggering among the zip-tied Global Sumud activists last week, each of whom was forced face down before him.
Sadists like doing this sort of thing. It recalled the dreadful footage from last year of him intimidating the great Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti.
Hāhona was being moved through a huge tent. He passed a table where Ben-Gvir was drinking a can of Coke. The minister looked up and saw a man with a facial tattoo. Recognising an Indigenous person, he spat at him! “It landed on my t-shirt,” Ormsby told me.
“As soon as he spat at me — and I don’t know if the soldier did it to impress Ben-Gvir — but the soldier with me punched me in the back of the head.”
Hāhona Ormsby is Ngāti Maniapoto, a member of a major tribal federation in New Zealand. He is one of the nicest, most decent people you could possibly meet. His mataora (tattoo) is both sacred and traditional. Earlier that day it had already drawn unwelcome attention.
“He’s a Māori! He’s a Māori!” a female soldier shouted, pointing at Ormsby. She may have recognised this if she was one of thousands of Israeli soldiers who holiday in New Zealand every year. Our government welcomes them, no questions asked.
Few Palestinian refugees are ever allowed entry.
Personal ‘minder’
As with each activist, Hāhona was provided a personal “minder” soon after he arrived in Ashdod, Israel.

Hāhona Ormsby at sea with the Global Sumud Flotilla humanitarian aid bid to break Israel’s illegal blockade of the Gaza Strip enclave. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

“A soldier came and lifted me up by my zip ties. He pulled down his mask and said, ‘Look into my eyes. I am the craziest motherfucker here. I will hurt you every minute you are with me’.” And that is how the nightmare started.
Throughout the day the New Zealand citizen was intermittently punched, kicked, kneed in the groin, body slammed, stripped naked, and repeatedly hauled up by the plastic zip ties that bound his wrists together.
Several of the captives told me how incredibly tight and painful these zip ties were and how they feared long-term nerve damage.
“The whole time I looked at that soldier I was thinking, ‘I know you kill children, I know you kill women, I know you are that evil,” Evil. That word has come up several times in my conversations with the activists who got this taste, this small intimate encounter with the genocide.
Hāhona thought of his good friend, fellow Kiwi Julien Blondel who was savagely beaten a couple of weeks earlier. “I felt his wairua (spirit), his brokenness and I now understood that brokenness. That sense of lostness.”
Forced head down for long periods in stress positions, receiving random kicks and body slams throughout the day, he was also menaced by close encounters with dogs. “If you do not stop lying to me, I’m going to lock you in that cell with these dogs!” he was told when an interrogator said he didn’t believe he was a teacher.
Hāhona thought of his whānau, his extended family. He remembered they had urged him to come home after he made it to Türkiye after an earlier interception, an earlier ordeal in April.
“But I thought: my comrades, they were going on and I had to stand with them.”
Beaten unconscious
At one point his “minder” beat him unconscious. The Kiwi citizen was kicked hard in the groin and that night had blood in his urine. “The whole night I thought about the Palestinians and what they are going through. If the Israelis do this to a New Zealander imagine what the Palestinians are going through.”
To me, listening to this, I recognised true courage, true humanity, the kind we seldom encounter and should always revere.
Listening to Hāhona Ormsby I recalled my Catholic upbringing and the words of John 15: “Greater love hath no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.” Ormsby and all those other activists joined the flotilla not out of hatred for Israel but out of love for suffering humanity, for their brothers and sisters in Palestine. They represent the very best of us.
Another man who professes to be a Christian is the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Christopher Luxon. For me, his variant bends towards Hell and Israel; our government being a stalwart ally of the Israelis. The Israeli Ambassador is being called in by the ministry of foreign affairs for what, Ormsby says, is likely “a slap with a wet bus ticket” over the state terrorist attack on New Zealand citizens.
Our government offered no material support to the Sumud activists after the recent ordeals our citizens were subjected to. They issued no warnings to the Israelis to respect our citizens, providing the IDF with a free pass to abuse New Zealanders in captivity.
And, my god, they did. The first duty of a leader is to protect citizens. All this comes in a week that saw Israel added to the United Nations blacklist of nations committing sexual violence in conflict zones.
I won’t repeat all the grim details of what Hāhona went through. Let us just say it was a huge relief when, four days after his capture aboard the Al Tira (named, as all the Sumud boats were, after a Palestinian village that had been erased by the Israeli occupation), Hāhona was transferred to the airport where they boarded planes provided by the Turkish government.
Turkish delight!
Ormsby had his first food in four days on that plane — Turkish delight! On the tarmac at Istanbul they were welcomed by top Turkish politicians and Foreign Ministry staff, a crowd of supporters, media and a fleet of buses and ambulances to shuttle those who needed it to hospital, others to medical checks, forensic interviews to record their testimony, psychological evaluations and eventually a banquet and accommodation provided by the government.

NZ Prime Minister of Christopher Luxon (left), “his variant bends towards Hell and Israel; our government being a stalwart ally of the Israelis”; Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir; and another New Zealand flotilla activist, Julien Blondel, who was severely beaten last month. Image: www.solidarity.co.nz

It is worth noting that no officials welcomed them when they returned to New Zealand. No media was there to interview them. It reminded me of the similarly shameful way New Zealanders who fought Franco’s Fascists in Spain in the 1930s were treated on their return, prior to the Second World War.
It’s our collective job to make sure this extraordinary story is shared and remembered — and that we draw the necessary lessons from it.
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He is a contributor to Asia Pacific Report and hosts solidarity.co.nz

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/05/29/hes-maori-hahona-ormsby-a-new-zealander-in-the-israeli-prison-system-nightmare/

Samoan nationals could face death penalty over ‘Coconut Cartel’ killing in Vietnam

Asia Pacific Report — Fri, 29 May 2026 00:40:04 +0000

Source: Asia Pacific Report

By RNZ Morning Report and Margot Staunton, RNZ Pacific senior journalist

The bank accounts of two New Zealanders have been frozen as police probe an extraordinary international case of two alleged Samoan hitmen who confessed to murdering a Sydney gang boss.
Joseph Vaa, 27, admitted on Vietnamese television to gunning down suspected “Coconut Cartel” ringleader Lorenzo Lemalu Tovia outside a restaurant in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam on May 21.
His associate, Steve Tofa, 23, also called Tafia in some news reports, then confessed to being his accomplice in the shooting.

Fiji police have since confirmed the pair, who are facing down a potential death penalty, transited through the island nation’s international airport.
Tovia died at the scene while his associate Sauni Sam, 27, is in intensive care in hospital with serious injuries.
Tovia is believed to be the mastermind behind Sydney’s Coconut Cartel, which reportedly broke away and declared war on the rival Alameddine gang earlier this year.
Samoa police have frozen the bank accounts of the duo as well as four other people as their investigations into the bizarre international case widen.
Urgent directive
Documents obtained by RNZ Pacific show the transnational crime unit issued an urgent directive to the Central Bank of Samoa (CBS) on Wednesday, ordering six accounts and transactions connected to them to be immobilised.
CBS governor Maiava Atalina Ainuu-Enari immediately ordered commercial banks to freeze accounts belonging to Vaa and Tovia “without delay”, as well as those belonging to two New Zealand nationals, a United States citizen and a Thai.
Those named in the order, issued on May 27 under Samoa’s money laundering laws, were Tafia Tovia (aka Steve Tofa), Vaa Soloa Vaa (aka Joseph Vaa), Connor Songkran Strickert, Fred Olivia Junior Papalii, Olini Atiua and James Tuisavailuu Atua.
The document states the request relates to “an ongoing investigation into a serious violent incident that occurred in Vietnam” and “two Samoan nationals alleged to have been involved in the shooting of another Samoan man, believed to be associated with organised criminal activity”.
In a further connection to New Zealand, three people have been stopped by police investigating the gang hit as they tried to board a flight from Samoa to Auckland.
The man, woman and child were bound for Auckland when they were arrested at Faleolo International Airport in Samoa on Thursday, 7 News Australia reported.
Pair used fake passports, false names – reports
A video on Vietnamese television channel VTV9 showed Vaa and Tofa, wearing black hoods and handcuffs, while being marched into a room by police to confess. The footage showed that the two were reading their confessions from a script.
Fiji police spokesperson Ana Naisoro told RNZ Pacific that the two “travelled through Fiji, using their Samoan passports”.
However, Naisoro declined to confirm local media reports that there had been a security breach, which was only discovered after overseas law enforcement agencies shared intelligence with Fijian border officials.
According to local reports, the suspects used fake passports and false names to transit through Fiji’s main international airport in Nadi.
Fiji police and immigration are now reportedly working closely with international police networks, including Interpol, to trace the pair’s movements during their short stay in the country.
Capital punishment
Australian drug policy researcher Dr Ben Mostyn told RNZ Morning Report the alleged hitmen could face execution under Vietnam’s capital punishment laws.
The Sydney University senior lecturer said the Australian and Samoan governments were opposed to capital punishment and could try to intervene.
“Often when you have these sort of dual citizens in foreign countries you can get diplomatic behaviour from both countries trying to intervene.”
But he said “quite a few” Australian nationals have been executed in Southeast Asia in the past, despite diplomatic efforts.
The duo were initially thought to be Australian but 7News reports they used fake passports and false names; Lang Kenny Trong Minh do and Justin John White, to travel to Vietnam. They were arrested at the Cambodian border less than three days after the shooting.
Dr Mostyn said police believed the killing was meant to send a message to the cartel, which was trying to separate from a larger gang.
Violence around the drug trade is not unusual in the Southeast Asia, he added.
Samoa authorities react
Authorities also identified Unalei Car Rentals in the Apia suburb of Vaitele as an “associated entity” linked to the investigation.
The order stated that the Financial Intelligence Unity (FIU) had grounds to suspect the transactions involved proceeds of serious crime, money landering offences or offences linked to the financing of terrorism.
The development comes after three people due to fly to Auckland on Air New Zealand were were stopped at Faleolo International Airport on Wednesday night.
Sources told the Samoa Observer that a man was given a stop order before boarding the aircraft. Video footage reportedly obtained by the newspaper shows a man dressed in black being escorted by police at the airport.
In a bizarre twist, the police later issued a statement saying they were seeking Strickert for questioning.
The Thai citizen claimed on Facebook that he had already been questioned by the police, was “willing to cooperate fully” and had “nothing to hide”.
‘Highly dangerous’
Lieutenant General Mai Hoàng, the director of the HCM City Police, said authorities would deal strictly with all lawbreakers operating within Vietnamese territory.
“If the subjects provide sincere declarations, they will receive the leniency of Vietnamese law,” he stated.
Local police said the alleged hitmen used “military-grade firearms” during the attack last Wednesday night outside the Cee’f seafood restaurant on Truong Dinh Street in Ben Thanh ward. Surveillance footage showed them fleeing on foot immediately afterwards.
Deputy director of police Nguyen Thanh Hung told state media that police used surveillance measures and digital mapping to trace their movements and escape route.
Investigators issued emergency detention orders against the two suspects and said at the time that they were “highly dangerous” and “prepared to resist arrest”.
The Khmer Times reported that during their initial interrogation, the suspects told police that they were acting on behalf of a individual based abroad.
They said they had arrived at Tan Son Nhat International Airport in HCM city on May 14 and spent several days monitoring the activities of the two Australian victims.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/05/29/samoan-nationals-could-face-death-penalty-over-coconut-cartel-killing-in-vietnam/

Palestinian journalists from Gaza ‘treated inhumanely’ by Israeli army and Shin Bet, accuses RSF

Asia Pacific Report — Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:05 +0000

Source: Asia Pacific Report

Pacific Media Watch

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has accused the Israeli army and internal security agency Shin Bet of repeatedly perpetrating inhumane acts against Palestinian journalists from Gaza.
The Paris-based global media freedom monitoring and advocacy movement says it has interviewed five Gazan journalists who were imprisoned in Israel after the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas.
They described targeted arrests, interrogations related to their work, torture and brutal abuse at the hands of their Israeli captors.

The journalists include Alaa al-Sarraj, a cameraman for the Ain Media production company; Diaa al-Kahlout, local bureau chief of the Qatari newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed; Shady Abu Sedo, a cameraman with the Palestine Today television channel; and Emad al-Ifranji, the local editor of the Palestinian daily Al-Quds.
The fifth journalist requested anonymity for fear of Israeli army reprisals.
They were all initially imprisoned at Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel, about 30 km from the Gaza Strip, which has been denounced by Israeli and international human rights organisations as a torture camp.
“The facts reported here are damning for the Israeli authorities, including the Israeli army, Shin Bet and judiciary,” said Martin Roux, head of RSF’s Crisis Desk
“They arrested these journalists knowing their profession and, in some cases, because of it.
“The work of these journalists was used as grounds for interrogation amounting to torture, during arbitrary detention legalised by judges. These repeated acts speak to a systematic persecution of journalists in Palestine aimed at preventing media coverage of human rights violations by the Israeli state.
“RSF continues to demand the immediate release of all Palestinian journalists arbitrarily detained by Israel.”
RSF reports:
The time when Palestine Today cameraman Shady Abu Sedo was reporting now seems like a distant memory. In fact, he was last reporting as recently as 18 March 2024. He had gone to the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza to interview victims of the Israeli bombings, launched five months earlier in retaliation for the attacks by Hamas’s armed wing on 7 October 2023.
Arrested by soldiers after identifying himself as a journalist, he was held for 572 days, initially at the Sde Teiman military base, located 30 kms from the Gaza Strip in the Negev desert, and then in Ofer and Ketziot-Al Naqab prisons.
At the end of these 19 months of torture, deprivation, interrogations and violence, some of it related to his profession, he remains, at 36, scarred by psychological trauma and physical aftereffects that prevent him from returning to work.
“Since you left your camera at Al-Shifa Hospital, I’m going to gouge your eye out,” one of his captors told him, referring to the location of his arrest, before beating him repeatedly in the face.
His right eye has not regained its sight. The scabies he contracted in prison continues to plague him, and he now suffers from epilepsy, insomnia and anorexia.
“After the scenes I have witnessed, I can no longer stay at home within four walls, nor look at the sky without having a fit. If I don’t take sedatives, I suddenly start screaming,” he says.
He was released on 11 October 2025.
None of the five journalists interviewed by RSF was able to resume working as a journalist after their release. When not the result of serious physical and psychological injuries inflicted during their detention, Israeli army destruction has been to blame.
After his release, Shady Abu Sedo did not find his home, which had been hit by Israeli aircraft.
“I lost my house, my car, and all my reporting equipment worth more than $50,000 [about 43,000 euros],” said Alaa al-Sarraj, who was detained for 692 days, from 16 November 2023 to 11 October 2025.
“But I could start again from scratch,” said the 35-year-old employee of the Ain Media production company, whose entire archive of reports was destroyed. Two of its journalists were killed by the Israel army, while another is imprisoned and two have been missing since 7 October 2023.
Waving his press card
Like Shady Abu Sedo, the four other media professionals interviewed by RSF said they explicitly told the Israeli army that they were journalists — whose work must be protected in war zones under international law — at the time of their arrest in the Gaza Strip.
Alaa al-Sarraj was arrested on 16 November 2023 at the Netzarim checkpoint, which the Israeli army set up on Salah al-Din Road to screen the population in the centre of the besieged territory.
“I was interrogated there, I confirmed that I was a journalist, and it was on that basis that I was arrested,” he said.
The following month, Diaa al-Kahlout, then director of the Gaza bureau of the Qatar-based international daily Al-Araby Al-Jadeed (“The New Arab in English”), even brandished his press card while repeatedly stating his profession to the Israeli soldiers who arrested him on 7 December 2023, in Beit Lahya, in the northern Gaza Strip.
“It doesn’t matter,” one of them reportedly told him, before he found himself among a group of several hundred captive men, stripped naked and bound, as evidenced by a video filmed by an Israeli soldier.
Throughout his arrest and subsequent transfer, the journalist, then aged 37, was beaten and interrogated by the soldiers escorting him, as well as by an officer who claimed to belong to Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency.
They questioned him about his articles, his alleged ties to Hamas members, and the owner of his media outlet.
When he tried to explain, a soldier gagged him with tape.
“I lost all hope,” he recalls, at that moment, the last before being “thrown into a truck” and forcibly taken into Israeli territory.
“I know you, you’re a journalist”
Now aged 57, Emad al-Ifranji, the Gaza director of the Palestinian daily Al-Quds, had no need to introduce himself. He was immediately identified by the Israeli soldier who arrested him on the night of 18 March 2024 at Al-Shifa Hospital, where he had gone to get electricity and an internet connection for work.
“I know you, you’re a veteran journalist,” the soldier reportedly told him.
“I replied that it was true,” Emad al-Ifranji said. “He dragged me roughly out of the outpatient clinic building, and that’s when the ordeal began.”
From Sde Teiman to Ofer, Ketziot and Nafah
This descent into Israeli prison hell began inside the barracks at Sde Teiman.
“From there, you lose your name and become just a number,” said Emad al-Ifranji, who, like Shady Abu Sedo, was held for 572 days.
At the mercy of their captors, the journalists reported having been subjected to violence, humiliation and deprivation. Their accounts share a common thread: terror at the random beatings they endured while constantly blindfolded.
The resulting fractures were systematically left untreated, leading to painful and often irreversible complications. The limited food and sleep they were allowed barely kept them alive to endure the blows and insults of gleeful soldiers. Some witnessed fellow prisoners being murdered and one raped by a dog.
After Sde Teiman, four of the journalists interviewed were taken to Ofer prison, near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, where a military unit has been established for prisoners from Gaza, and to Ketziot-Al Naqab prison, near the Egyptian Sinai, preceded, in Alaa al-Sarraj’s case, by Nafha prison in the southern Negev.
Violations and ill-treatment of prisoners continued to be the norm there. Only Diaa al-Kahlout was released after 33 days of violence and cruel and inhumane treatment endured on the Israeli military base.
Aman and Shin Bet interrogations
Those who emerged from Sde Teiman speak of a machinery designed to “subjugate men,” said one of the five surviving journalists.
The brutal interrogations, which are a crucial part of the torture machine, subject journalists to special treatment. For example, Shady Abu Sedo, before being handed over to the officer who injured his right eye, was tied for hours to the “fridge,” a cell measuring two metres by one metre equipped with air conditioning that “bites you to the bone.”
He said he was then interrogated specifically about his work by an officer with the military intelligence agency Aman: Had he filmed in the northern Gaza Strip? Was he there reporting on 7 October 2023? Did he know any journalists who had covered the attacks by Hamas fighters?
“I killed all the journalists, and those I couldn’t kill, I brought them here,” Shady Abu Sedo quotes his interrogator as saying. He was then imprisoned for several days in the “disco,” a building in Sde Teiman designed to wear prisoners down by means of powerful speakers that continuously blast music.
Another journalist interviewed by RSF was also subjected to this torture.
While almost all the detainees at Sde Teiman underwent such interrogations, particularly regarding the fate of Israeli hostages, reporters were subjected to “technical questions focused on journalistic work in the Gaza Strip,” said Alaa al-Sarraj, who was questioned about his academic background and professional network, including doctors at Al-Shifa Hospital, politicians, political organisations and his colleagues in Gaza.
“They also asked me what you might call strategic questions,” he said.
Emad al-Ifranji and Diaa al-Kahlout, who held positions of responsibility within their media outlets, were subjected to no fewer than four extremely violent interrogations at the hands of Aman and the Shin Bet, a sign of the special attention paid to journalists in an attempt to obtain information deemed tactical by the Israeli authorities in the context of the conflict.
In March 2024, during the first weeks of his imprisonment in Sde Teiman, Emad al-Ifranji was questioned twice, in separate interrogations about 10 days apart, about his interview 13 years before with Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, who was wanted by the Israeli army, which regarded him as the organiser of the 7 October 2023 attacks. Sinwar was killed for this on 16 October 2024.
Regarded by Israel’s justice system as ‘unlawful combatants’
Judges at the Beersheva court have given a veneer of legality to the prolonged detention of civilians identified by Israeli intelligence as journalists.
In a series of expedited hearings conducted via videoconference or telephone, and without legal representation, the Southern District Court of Israel — which has jurisdiction under a 2002 law on “illegal combatants,” revised after 7 October 2023 and applicable to the thousands of detainees in Gaza — has repeatedly approved their continued indefinite detention.
“The assumption is that if a detainee meets the definition of a journalist, this fact is brought to the court’s attention; however, we do not hold specific information to that effect,” Israel’s justice ministry said.
As in the case of its use against journalists, this law, based on a term that is “undefined and is therefore open to abuse and inconsistent with the principle of legality,” according to a 2007 UN report, makes it possible to “to justify arresting all these thousands of detainees from Gaza and keeping them based on secret information for indefinite periods,” said a lawyer specialising in the Israeli prison system for Palestinians.
Four soldiers had laser sights trained on Emad al-Ifranji’s face during his initial court hearing, although the Justice Ministry later claimed to have “no knowledge” of this.
The hearing lasted less than five minutes, but he managed to remind the court that he was “protected under international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.” Addressing a judge in Beersheba via webcam, Shady Abu Sedo asked, “How can I be an illegal fighter? I’m a journalist.”
The judge’s response was categorical: “You belong to the Palestinian terrorist press.”
A few days before their release, these journalists were summoned by Israeli military intelligence, which routinely subjects detainees to a final act of intimidation. Some of them report having been explicitly warned against resuming their work.
Contacted by RSF regarding the accounts of their imprisonment provided by these five journalists, the Israeli army claimed that it “does not intentionally harm journalists” and that, despite the mounting evidence, it “rejects allegations concerning the systematic abuse of detainees, including journalists.”
Shin Bet did not respond to RSF’s questions.
According to RSF data, 19 Palestinian journalists are currently detained arbitrarily by the Israeli authorities. Two of them, like the sources cited in this article, were captured in the Gaza Strip after 7 October 2023.
They are Hani Issa, editor-in-chief of Quds Net, and Amjad Arafat, a reporter for the Ain Media production company.
Ali Samoudi, a leading Palestinian journalist and veteran reporter based in Jenin, in the northern occupied West Bank, was released on 30 April 2026, after a year of wrongful imprisonment.
On the day of his release, he reported that he lost nearly 60 kilos while held, blaming the mistreatment he suffered at the hands of Israeli authorities.

Israel is ranked 116th and Palestine 156th out of 180 countries surveyed in the 2026 RSF World Press Freedom Index.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/05/28/palestinian-journalists-from-gaza-treated-inhumanely-by-israeli-army-and-shin-bet-accuses-rsf/

NZ Budget 2026 boosts Pacific aid, defence spending amid security concerns

Asia Pacific Report — Thu, 28 May 2026 07:55:04 +0000

Source: Asia Pacific Report

By Kaya Selby, RNZ Pacific journalist

New Zealand’s Budget 2026 will see more foreign aid to the Pacific region, while defence and customs spending rises with an eye towards crime and security.
But Pacific-focused policy work will be cut as the government seeks to reduce the size of the public sector, as the Ministry for Pacific Peoples (MPP) will see a $2.8 million cut over four years.
The ministry previously saw a significant cut in Budget 2024.

New Zealand will spend $1.2 billion on foreign aid this fiscal year, around $116 million more than the last year.
Additionally, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) has set aside $110 million in aid spending for the Indo-Pacific exclusively for three years beginning in 2027/28.
Foreign Minister Winston Peters said a highly active and effective foreign policy is called for in what he called the most adverse and contested geostrategic environment of the past 80 years.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis . . . the budget heavily prioritises capital spending for infrastructure, while tightening the government’s belt. Image: RNZ/Samuel Rillstone

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/05/28/nz-budget-2026-boosts-pacific-aid-defence-spending-amid-security-concerns/