Since the attacks on the United States by 15 Saudi Arabian Islamic fanatics on 11 September  2001 — now known as 9/11 —  the world has been divided by a “war on terror” with any protest group defined as “terrorists”.

New anti-terror laws have been introduced both in the West and elsewhere in the past 20 years and used extensively to suppress such movements in the name of “national security”.

It is interesting to note that the 9/11 attacks came at a time when a huge “global justice” movement was building up across the world against the injustices of globalisation.

Using the internet as the medium of mobilisation, they gathered in Seattle in 1999 and were successful in closing down the World Trade Organisation (WTO) meeting.

They opposed what they saw as large multinational corporations having unregulated political power, exercised through trade agreements and deregulated financial markets, facilitated by governments.

Their main targets were the WTO, International Monetary Fund (IMF), OECD, World Bank, and international trade agreements.

The movement brought “civil society” people from the North and the South together under common goals.

Poorest country debts
In parallel, the “Jubilee 2000” international movement led by liberal Christian and Catholic churches called for the cancellation of US$90 billion of debts owed by the world’s poorest nations to banks and governments in the West.

Along with the churches, youth groups, music, and entertainment industry groups were involved. The 9/11 attacks killed these movements as “national security” took precedence over “freedom to dissent”.

Dr Dayan Jayatilleka, a former vice-president of the UN Human Rights Council and a Sri Lankan political scientist, notes that when “capitalism turned neoliberal and went on the rampage” after the demise of the Soviet Union, resistance started to develop with the rise of the Zapatistas in Chiapas (Mexico) against NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) and culminating in the 1999 Seattle protests using a term coined by Cuban leader Fidel Castro “another world is possible”.

“All that came crashing down with the Twin Towers,” he notes. “With 9/11 the Islamic Jihadist opposition to the USA (and the war on terror) cut across and buried the progressive resistance we saw emerging in Chiapas and Seattle.”

Geoffrey Robertson QC, a British human rights campaigner and TV personality, warns: “9/11 panicked us into the ‘war on terror’ using lethal weapons of questionable legality which inspired more terrorists.

“Twenty years on, those same adversaries are back and we now have a fear of US perfidy—over Taiwan or ANZUS or whatever. There will be many consequences.”

But, he sees some silver lining that has come out of this “war on terror”.

Targeted sanctions
“One reasonably successful tactic developed in the war on terror was to use targeted sanctions on its sponsors. This has been developed by so-called ‘Magnitsky acts’, enabling the targeting of human rights abusers—31 democracies now have them and Australia will shortly be the 32nd.

“I foresee their coordination as part of the fightback—a war not on terror but state cruelty,” he told In-Depth News.

When asked about the US’s humiliation in Afghanistan, Dr Chandra Muzaffar, founder of the International Movement for a Just World told IDN that the West needed to understand that they too needed to stop funding terror to achieve their own agendas.

“The ‘war on terror’ was doomed to failure from the outset because those who initiated the war were not prepared to admit that it was their occupation and oppression that compelled others to retaliate through acts of terror.” he argues.

“Popular antagonism towards the occupiers was one of the main reasons for the humiliating defeat of the US and NATO in Afghanistan,” he added.

Looking at Western attempts to introduce democracy under the pretext of “war on terror” and the chaos created by the “Arab Spring”, a youth movement driven by Western-funded NGOs, Iranian-born Australian Farzin Yekta, who worked in Lebanon for 15 years as a community multimedia worker, argues that the Arab region needs a different democracy.

“In the Middle East, the nations should aspire to a system based on social justice rather than the Western democratic model. Corrupt political and economic apparatus, external interference and dysfunctional infrastructure are the main obstacles for moving towards establishing a system based on social justice,” he says, adding that there are signs of growing social movements being revived in the region while “resisting all kinds of attacks”.

Palestinian refugee lessons
Yekta told IDN that while working with Palestinian refugee groups in Lebanon he had seen how peoples’ movements could be undermined by so-called “civil society” NGOs.

“Alternative social movements are infested by ‘civil society’ institutions comprising primarily NGO institutions.

“‘Civil society’ is effective leverage for the establishment and foreign (Western) interference to pacify radical social movements. Social movements find themselves in a web of funded entities which push for ‘agendas’ drawn by funding buddies,” noted Yekta.

Looking at the failure of Western forces in Afghanistan, he argues that what they did by building up “civil society” was encouraging corruption and cronyism that is entangled in ethnic and tribal structures of society.

“The Western nation-building plan was limited to setting up a glasshouse pseudo-democratic space in the green zone part of Kabul.

“One just needed to go to the countryside to confront the utter poverty and lack of infrastructure,” Yekta notes.

”We need to understand that people’s struggle is occurring at places with poor or no infrastructure.”

Social movements reviving
Dr Jayatilleka also sees positive signs of social movements beginning to raise their heads after two decades of repression.

“Black Lives Matter drew in perhaps more young whites than blacks and constituted the largest ever protest movement in history. The globalised solidarity with the Palestinian people of Gaza, including large demonstrations in US cities, is further evidence.

“In Latin America, the left-populist Pink Tide 2.0 began with the victory of Lopez Obrador in Mexico and has produced the victory of Pedro Castillo in Peru.

“The slogan of justice, both individual and social, is more globalised, more universalised today, than ever before in my lifetime,” he told IDN.

There may be ample issues for peoples’ movements to take up with TPP (Transpacific Partnership) and RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) trade agreements coming into force in Asia where companies would be able to sue governments if their social policies infringe on company profits.

But Dr Jayatilleka is less optimistic of social movements rising in Asia.

Asian social inequities
“Sadly, the social justice movement is considerably more complicated in Asia than elsewhere, though one would have assumed that given the social inequities in Asian societies, the struggle for social justice would be a torrent. It is not,” he argues.

“The brightest recent spark in Asia, according to Dr Jayatilleka, was the rise of the Nepali Communist Party to power through the ballot box after a protracted peoples’ war, but ‘sectarianism’ has led to the subsiding of what was the brightest hope for the social justice movement in Asia.”

Robertson feels that the time is ripe for the social movements suppressed by post 9/11 anti-terror laws to be reincarnated in a different life.

“The broader demand for social justice will revive, initially behind the imperative of dealing with climate change but then with tax havens, the power of multinationals, and the obscene inequalities in the world’s wealth.

“So, I do not despair of social justice momentum in the future,” he says.

Republished under Creative Commons partnership with IDN – In-Depth News.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In the column, freelance journalist Teuila Fuatai detailed her concerns about the Herald’s record on race and her efforts to raise those with her editors.

It wasn’t what she was originally commissioned to write.

Her editors had asked for an article about racism in New Zealand more generally, covering systemic issues in institutions like Oranga Tamariki, the police, and the justice system.

Fuatai says she started out trying to follow that brief before a conversation with the New Zealand organisers of Black Lives Matter left her feeling she couldn’t follow through on that brief without addressing the Herald’s coverage first.

“I suppose it was just a week after the first protest march in New Zealand and I thought they’d be a great group to speak to as an anti-racism group,” she says.

“It changed when they basically said they didn’t want to talk to me because the Herald and its coverage was racist and upheld structures of white supremacy.”

Criticism hard to bear
The criticism was hard to hear, but Fuatai agreed with the organisers.

The Herald has been criticised over its coverage of race in the past, notably when it published a 2012 column by Paul Holmes calling Waitangi Day a “complete waste” and in 2014 when it printed a white fist on its masthead along with a promise its Waitangi coverage would be “protest-free”.

More recently journalist Madeleine Chapman highlighted the lack of diversity in the paper’s editorial department.

However, the Herald has responded to the Black Lives Matter protests with examinations of racism and colonial legacies in New Zealand – among them, the piece Teuila Fautai was asked to write.

In late June for example, Herald Māori affairs reporter Michael Neilson looked at “a local dispute about trees, which for many is about much more than just trees” under the headline: How Ōwairaka/Mt Albert tree protest became a flashpoint for racism, colonisation debate.

Nielsen has also written in depth about the “statues issue” under the explicit heading “George Floyd protests and racism”.

Fuatai is now a freelancer, but has been on staff at the Herald, and she says many of the paper’s issues with race are structural and systemic.

Newsroom lack of diversity
“I do think that there is a lack of diversity in their newsroom and I do think that we’ve seen, publicly, problematic coverage pointed out – both recent and historic,” she says.

“From my personal perspective I think that we operate in inherently racist structures. So for the Herald to not be like that – it would be an outlier.”

Fuatai went back to her editors offering to write an assessment of the Herald’s coverage of race.

She cited the example of National Geographic which carried out an audit of its history of racist reporting in the leadup to Martin Luther King day in 2018.

That sort of harsh self-reflection is taking place in an increasing number of news organisations around the world, as journalists are called on to re-examine their treatment of race in light of the Black Lives Matter movement.

In the US, The New York Times underwent a staff revolt after publishing a column by the Arkansas senator Tom Cotton which called for the government to send in the military against Black Lives Matter protesters.

Dozens of journalists said the column put the paper’s Black staff in danger, eventually prompting the Times’ Opinion section editor James Bennet to tender his resignation.

Editors forced to resign
The Times wasn’t alone. A top editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer resigned after printing the headline “Buildings Matter Too” during the Black Lives Matter protests.

Editors at other outlets including Variety, Bon Appétit magazine and the fashion and culture website Refinery29 stepped down under employee pressure.

Some newsrooms have moved proactively to improve their coverage. In a tacit acknowledgement of its own failure to cover the issue adequately, The Washington Post has set up a dedicated unit covering race in the US.

Similar discussions are starting to take place here in New Zealand. Under its new owner Sinead Boucher, Stuff is looking to set up a section devoted to covering Te Ao Māori, the Māori world.

Fuatai says editors need to understand the value in promoting people of colour to positions of influence, giving platforms to diverse voices, and catering content to diverse audiences.

“Understand that in 10 years time, your audience and your readership or your viewers – you want to be right there with them in understanding the issues and the conversations that they’re having. Part of that is looking at the makeup of your newsroom. To do that you have to understand the value in actually diversifying,” she told Mediawatch

Fuatai’s first conversation with a Herald editor ended with her being told to stick to her original story brief.

Lengthy editing process
The column published on Monday was the result of a lengthy editing process.

She is pleased with the final result, and with the fact that the paper was willing to confront its record in public.

That sort of self-examination needs to keep happening, not just at the Herald, but in newsrooms across the country, she says.

“You have to work hard to be anti-racist. You have to work against the status quo. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to stand up and say ‘let’s look at ourselves’.”

Challenging racism often means challenging ourselves and those immediately around us. It is difficult and risky, especially in the workplace. A piece about doing it at the NZ Herald – one of the toughest ones I’ve tackled.https://t.co/YtSYmYxBEB

— Teuila Fuatai (@teuilafuatai) June 28, 2020

Herald: ‘We hope to be agents of change’
New Zealand Herald editor Murray Kirkness responded to Teulia Fuatai’s column on Monday with a statement of his own under the headline “We hope to be agents for change”.

“Being accused of racism is a difficult pill to swallow,” he wrote.

“But it would be reckless to dismiss it and say, ‘not on our watch’. We accept the criticism and accept we must do better.”

“We cannot agree with Black Lives Matter’s refusal to engage with Teuila Fuatai. For what hope is there without debate? What future without striving for a shared understanding?

But we can understand their insistence that it is not that group’s responsibility to educate the Herald. No victim should carry that burden,” he wrote.

Kirkness said the Herald’s publisher NZME – which also owns half the country’s radio stations – is committed to accountability and monitors diversity of voice. It formed a diversity and inclusion committee in 2016 overseeing all the company’s media outlets, he said.

“We hope we can be agents for change across society — a role the Herald has fulfilled for more than 150 years,” he wrote.

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Indonesia has urged the international community to speak up and take decisive action against racial violence at a United Nations forum in Geneva, Switzerland.

But Indonesia’s call comes amid concerns of racial discrimination at home.

The UN Human Rights Council last Wednesday held an urgent debate on racial violence, the forum of which was requested by several African countries in response to the rise of racial violence, particularly in relation to the murder of African-American George Floyd that has attracted global attention and given greater prominence to the antiracism movement Black Lives Matter.

READ MORE: Jayapura police question students for holding forum protesting Papuan activists trial

“In connection to this, Indonesia, among others, called for respect and tolerance of racial and ethnic diversity at the community level, the strengthening of the rule of law and accountability of law enforcement agencies and the expansion of human rights education in police academies and other law enforcement agencies,” the statement read.

In addition to speaking in a national capacity, Indonesia, represented by Indonesia’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, Hasan Kleib, was also entrusted with delivering the joint statement on behalf of the core group of the Convention Against Torture Initiative (CTI), which consists of Chile, Denmark, Fiji, Ghana, Indonesia and Morocco.

On behalf of CTI members, Indonesia called for “a zero-tolerance policy against racism and discrimination and reiterated the importance of a people-centered and violence prevention approach in law enforcement”.

Tainted by racism at home
However, Indonesia’s vocal stance on the global stage is tainted by persistent issues of racism at home.

As the Black Lives Matter movement began to go global, Indonesians flooded public forums with the hashtag #PapuanLivesMatter, drawing attention to several controversial cases of alleged racial discrimination, including the prosecution of the Balikpapan Seven — a group of Papuan student activists put on trial for their involvement in a series of antiracism protests in Jayapura, Papua, in 2019.

The protests came in response to a racially charged incident in which Papuan university students living in a dormitory in Surabaya, East Java, were targeted last August in what became widely known as the Papuan Uprising.

Reports said the students were physically and verbally attacked by security personnel and members of local mass organisations, who accused them of refusing to celebrate Indonesia’s 74th Independence Day.

Despite arguments that the seven students — Buchtar Tabuni, Ferry Kombo, Irwanus Uropmabin, Hengki Hilapok, Agus Kossay and Stevanus Itlay — staged the protests in a peaceful manner, a court in East Kalimantan found them guilty of treason.

Ironically, the issuance of the verdict coincided with the Geneva forum, during which Jakarta, in its national capacity, also delivered a statement expressing concern about the acts of violence and discrimination in many parts of the world, particularly due to the rise of racial violence and hate crimes.

The Balikpapan District Court in East Kalimantan sentenced the students to months in jail last Wednesday.

Demands for acquittal
Members of public, human rights advocates and activists had demanded the defendants be cleared of all charges, while prosecutors sought sentences of up to 17 years’ imprisonment.

Contacted by The Jakarta Post for comment, Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said that “as a matter of principle, Indonesia is against any form of racism and discrimination.

“In the national context, racism is an aberration to our motto of unity and diversity, as Indonesia is a mosaic of multiple ethnicities and cultures.”

The decision by the lower court in Balikpapan was made with due diligence, he added.

“The incident of mistreatment of Indonesians of Papuan origin are isolated and do not in any way reflect the policies of the government,” Faizasyah told Reuters recently.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Roger D. Harris
From Corte Madera, California

The police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25^th was the spark that ignited the tinder of accrued injustice throughout the US and globally. This injustice has deep antecedents in the US and indeed in much of what is now called the Global South. There is a shared history of colonial conquest of the Indigenous and the abominable institution of the enslavement of African peoples.

What happened has its roots in systemic oppression that has resonated internationally. Just as the police suffocated George Floyd, US unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Zimbabwe, and nearly one third of humanity are designed to asphyxiate those nations which aspire to pursue an independent course.

International Movement Erupts

Defying coronavirus restrictions on public assembly, people are amassing in solidarity.

• In the US colony of Puerto Rico, hundreds danced bomba and chanted the names of their martyrs along with George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many others. A guillotine was hauled up to the governor’s mansion.
• In Mexico, where Bill Clinton’s NAFTA decimated peasant agriculture, among the signs affixed to the security fencing in front of the US embassy was one reading, “racism kills, here, there, and all over the world.”
• Thousands took the streets in major cities in Brazil under the banner Vidas Negras Importam! The anti-racist struggle was connected to criticisms of the rightwing Bolsonaro government’s handling of the pandemic.
• In Chile, where the indigenous Mapuche leader Alejandro Treuquil was just assassinated, the cry “Mapuche lives matter” can be heard.
• In Greece, where the EU had wrecked the economy, youth associated with the Communist Party (KKE) lined up in front of the US embassy in Athens and the US consulate in Thessaloniki bearing torches and holding signs reading “capitalism means I can’t breathe.”
• In England, authorities had long resisted removal of the statue of 17^th-century slave trader Edward Colston, but 10,000 protesters marching in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement tore the racist symbol down and dumped it into the River Avon. Statues of colonialists Winston Churchill and Cecil Rhodes have been targeted by the movement and may come tumbling down too.In Belgium, statues of King Leopold II are meeting a similar fate as tens of thousands take to the streets in protest. The late 19^th and early 20^th-century monarch became fabulously wealthy over the dead bodies of millions of Africans, who were subjected to terrible atrocities.
• Warriors for Aboriginal Resistance and others drew the connection between the police murder of African Americans in the US to the deaths of over 400 Indigenous who are believed to have died in police custody in Australia as protests arose throughout the country.
• Similar actions took place in New Zealand, where the indigenous Maori are oppressed.
• In Cape Town, protesters marched on the parliament to pay homage to George Floyd and a local man, Collins Khosa, who was beaten to death by South African police, describing their struggle as part of an anti-neocolonial, anti-imperialist movement.
• In occupied Jerusalem, an autistic Palestinian man, Eyad Halak, was killed by Israeli police, precipitating demonstrations proclaiming: “Eyad and George [Floyd] were victims of similar systems of supremacy and oppression. They must be dismantled.”

This “historic alliance” of the Movement for Black Lives with the oppressed abroad goes back to their 2016 founding document, which then characterized Israel as an “apartheid” state, condemned US backing for the settler “genocide” against Palestinians, and supported the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement against Israel.

Linking Home and Abroad

The militarization of the US domestic police is bringing home the practices that the government perfected in suppressing popular expressions for self-determination abroad. The US’s closest international partner, Israel, is a master of abusive police practices against its own Palestinian population. Development of those practices, partly funded by the US, are then imported back to the US. Over 100 Minneapolis police received training from Israeli law enforcement officers along with other police departments across the country.

Newsweek describes “how America’s police became an army.” Under the 1033 Program, military equipment is transferred to the domestic police, who are then mandated to use the equipment as a condition of the program.

While the police have been shooting rubber bullets and teargas at demonstrators in the homeland, the US military deployed a so-called Security Force Assistance Brigade to Colombia. As the “world’s policeman,” the US has some 800 formal military bases internationally; no other country has more than a handful of foreign bases.

Budgets for both domestic police and the US military are obscenely inflated and continue to grow, receiving bipartisan support. The Black Lives Matter movement questions whether either of these armed forces – police and military – truly serve or protect us. When Hurricane Katrina flooded poor African American neighborhoods in New Orleans, people were left to die stranded on rooftops while the police and the National Guard guarded private property.

Amid the current pandemic, ordinary people are experiencing punishing austerity with the worst yet to come. While the US Fed is doling out hundreds of billions of dollars daily at a 1/10 of one percent interest rate – practically free money – to the banks, the average US citizen is saddled with average  credit card penalty interest rates of just under 30%. Who is doing the real looting?

Likewise, payments of unjust debt – mostly accrued by US-backed military dictatorships – to vulture capitalists from the US and other wealthy countries are stealing the livelihoods of the peoples of Argentina and other nations saddled with socially unsustainable debt burdens.

More people are behind bars in the US than anywhere else in the world, largely due to the so-called war on drugs, which in fact is a war on the most vulnerable and a pretext for the deployment of coercive means of social control. Black and brown people are targeted for arrest, adjudication, and imprisoned disproportionately compared to their numbers in the general population. The NAACP reports African Americans are imprisoned at five times the rate of whites. While poor communities in the US, particularly those of color, are suffering from the plague of drugs, the primary world source of cocaine is the US client state of Colombia and the primary world source of heroin  is US-occupied Afghanistan.

Delegitimization of “American Exceptionalism”

President Obama unequivocally exclaimed: “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fiber of my being.” In another speech, he proclaimed: “[W]hat makes us the envy of the world…[is] the fact that we’ve given everybody a chance to pursue their own true measure of happiness. That’s who we are.”

That’s not who “we” are, and the chant “no justice, no peace” is exposing that to the world. American exceptionalism is the ideological construct used to extol “American world leadership” based on the vision that the US is uniquely just and therefore has an obligation to endow the rest of the world with its freedom. As George Floyd’s niece Brooke Williams asked, “when has America ever been great?”

The US “leads” the world in incarceration of its own people, in consumption of addicting illicit drugs, in military and police spending, and in foreign military bases. No one elected the US to impose its “full spectrum dominance” on the globe. With the internationalization of the Black Lives Matter movement, this justifying ideology is being challenged, delegitimizing the US imperial project.

The internationalization of the protests reflects an understanding that it is the same US imperialist knee on the neck at home and abroad. Martin Luther King’s indictment that “the United States is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” rang true in 1967 and ever more so now. Appropriately, the movement around Black Lives Matter, which has engaged the popular classes in what Che called the “belly of the beast,” has taken international prominence signifying that where there is oppression, there will be resistance.

As activist and lawyer Mark P. Fancher observes, “resistance is global.” International solidarity among the oppressed has a long tradition and is gathering momentum based on the understanding there is one struggle for justice with many fronts. “No justice, no peace” is being heard around the world.

Roger D. Harris is Associate Editor at COHA and also part of the Task Force on the Americas, a human rights group working in solidarity with the social justice movements in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1985.

[Main photo-credit: Patricio Zamorano/COHA.org]

By RNZ News

New Zealand’s first weekend at post-covid alert level 1 drew massive crowds to Super Rugby Aotearoa matches in Auckland and Dunedin – but hospital emergency departments across the country also felt the impact of the return to normality.

In Auckland yesterday Sunday afternoon, the home team Blues played in front of their largest crowd in 15 years – a full house of 43,000 fans at Eden Park – and they didn’t disappoint, beating the Hurricanes by 10 points – 30-20.

While in Dunedin on Saturday night, 20,000 watched the game between the Highlanders and the Chiefs which was much closer with Bryn Gatland landing a stunning drop goal with minutes left on the clock to give the Highlanders the win by one point – 28-27.

READ MORE:  Al Jazeera live updates – France declares ‘first victory’ against coronavirus

Dunedin and Auckland’s mayors Aaron Hawkins and Phil Goff were among the thousands in the stands this weekend for the world’s first post-covid live rugby union matches.

Goff said that besides being a great game of rugby, the peaceful Black Lives Matter solidarity march in Auckland was a celebration of the return of normality.

“The fact that this match was broadcast around Australia and other places was a huge chance to showcase to the world New Zealand’s success in dealing with covid-19,” he said.

Hawkins said it was great to have “the zoo back in action” on Saturday night and to take part in the BLM march from the Octagon to Forsyth-Barr Stadium.

‘Great atmosphere’
“It was a great atmosphere before and after the game, it has huge implications for our local hospitality sector, being able to gather in numbers at events like big rugby games,” he said.

After the Blues match, Goff said the cafes, bars and restaurants in the area appeared to be doing great trade.

“Things were thriving there and people pick up that atmosphere of confidence and I think that that will spread around the city and around the country,” he said.

However, the first weekend of alert level 1 also brought an increase in admissions to hospital emergency departments.

Stabbings, assaults and car crashes were just some of the reasons for patients flocking back in, according to Waikato Hospital’s Dr John Bonning, who is also the president of the Australasian College of Emergency Medicine.

He said that expected arrivals had dropped by 50 to 60 percent in some hospitals, but reports from around the country indicated that this had risen to 85 to 95 percent of what was expected at this time of year.

“Mental health presentations have gone up proportionally across the country, but in general we’re getting unfortunately a return to some of the trauma and alcohol-fuelled violence that we’ve been used to over the years,” he said.

Paediatric presentations lower
However, paediatric presentations remained lower than usual, despite the end of lockdown restrictions.

“They usually go significantly higher in winter and they’re down 30 to 40 percent around the country,” he said. “That’s going to be due to increased hygiene measures and a bit of distancing that’s occurring and we’ll continue to watch that to see how that changes.”

Bonning said that while it was great that people were going outside and getting active, safety was important.

“All we’re keen for is for people to try to be responsible, take care of themselves and avoid that really avoidable alcohol-fuelled violence and motor vehicle trauma, the nasty stuff that people are really injured by.”

At Waitako Hospital, “fairly aggressive” screening for covid-19 continued, he said.

“We are very vigilant and the concept of a second wave is very much on our minds.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Thousands of people took part in the Black Lives Matter protests in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin today.

Auckland’s Aotea Square protesters, largely peaceful and family oriented, marched to Custom Street and demonstrated outside the American consulate where protesters took a knee and observed a minute of silence for George Floyd.

This was one of two mass gatherings in Auckland today after the 23rd day in a row of New Zealand being covid-19 free.

READ MORE: George Floyd: What we know about the officers charged over his death

The other was at Eden Park which displayed a “sold out” sign after a capacity 48,000 tickets had been sold for the Blues-Hurricanes Super Rugby Aotearoa match this afternoon. This match and one between the Highlanders and Chiefs in Dunedin last night kicked of the world’s first post-covid live crowd rugby matches.

The Black Lives Matter protests around the world started with the death of African-American George Floyd in Minneapolis, USA, on May 25 when white policeman Derek Chauvin was filmed kneeling on his neck for almost nine minutes.

Chauvin was videoed by Darnella Fraizer, a 17-year-old high school senior, as Floyd pleaded: “I can’t breathe.”

He has been charged with second degree murder, third degree murder and manslaughter. Three other policemen have been charged for aiding and abetting and all four officers were sacked from the police.

‘Keep it peaceful’
The Auckland protest march opened with a karakia at Aotea Square and a mihi whakatau from Graham Tipene of Ngāti Whātua, who told the crowd to “keep it peaceful”.

“Our kids are here, so let’s do it right and fight for what’s right,” he said.

Members of the black African communities addressed the crowd on the Black Lives Matter movement, along with social justice campaigner Julia Whaipooti, who talked about the use of armed police in predominantly Māori and Pasifika areas.

“For many of us this is not a new moment in time, not a hashtag on Instagram,” she said.

Emilie Rakete from People Against Prisons Aotearoa and the Arms Down movement spoke about armed police, particularly in South Auckland.

She said the “truth is that we live on a graveyard in Aotearoa”, with NZ police laying down the bodies.

“When the cops say hands up, we say arms down.”

‘They love to profit off our pain’
Auckland-based Somali-NZ rapper Mo Muse performed a piece written in the past two weeks, saying “they love to profit off our pain”.

“Tell Winston Peters he can see me in hell cos we won’t be silenced.”

Auckland University of Technology academic Associate Professor Camille Nakhid, who researched police discrimination against the African community in New Zealand, said racism was the knee on the neck of Māori, Pasifika and other communities of colour in New Zealand.

“Everything is talking and thinking about the murder of George Floyd in the US and the knee that was on his neck. But I want to talk about the knees on our neck, the Black indigenous people of colour in Aotearoa”, said Nr Nakhid, who is also chair of AUT’s Pacific Media Centre.

She said things such as putting students into lower streams in schools, lower standards of health and the uplifting of children were the knees upon the neck of people of colour in this country.

“This protest is because we love who we are. Do not let them turn our love into hate against each other.

“We have to remain awake because we need to get those knees off our neck.”

Wellington, Dunedin rallies
In Wellington, RNZ News reports that thousands of people gathered in Civic Square, to march to Parliament in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

The march was organised by a group of community advocates, including Guled Mire.

In Dunedin, hundreds of people gathered at the Otago Museum reserve to show solidarity with the movement. They marched down George Street to the Octagon, where a rally was held.

The Auckland march, which started at Aotea Square, headed down Queen St and ended at the US consulate, where protesters took a knee and observed a minute of silence for George Floyd.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The giant wave of the United States’ #BlackLivesMatter campaign has now swept across Indonesia. A number of groups have begun to discuss racism in the country and have touched upon a rarely discussed topic – racism against Papuans.

For a long time, racism against Indonesians of Chinese descent, also called Tionghoa, has dominated the nation’s discourse on the subject.

When someone says the word racism in the Indonesian context, many recall the May 1998 riots, about which considerable documentation and research exist.

READ MORE: ‘It’s unsafe out here for us’ – Black Lives Matter rallies in New Zealand

As a fourth-generation Chinese-Indonesian myself, I have benefited from progress in the relationship between Chinese-Indonesians and the rest of the population. There have been ups and downs, and racism has not disappeared completely.

But progress has been made because we have been discussing the problem openly; we are aware that it is a problem. Many people have yet to recognize the rape of Chinese-Indonesian women in May 1998, but generally, we have acknowledged the victims’ deaths, blood and tears.

This does not apply to racism against Papuans.

Even talking about it risks accusations of supporting Papuan “separatism” (as self-determination is characterised in Indonesia).

A bevier of deniers
At the very least, we will face a bevy of deniers saying there is no racism in Papua or that the deaths, blood and tears of Papuans are not the result of racism but rather a just punishment for separatists.

To say so is akin to saying that seeking to end racism against Chinese-Indonesians is the same as supporting communism. Fortunately, we left that phase long ago.

Many people are not happy with the #PapuanLivesMatter topic.

On June 5, for example, Amnesty International Indonesia held talks on human rights and freedom of expression in Papua. The discussion, which used the hashtag #PapuanLivesMatter, was bombarded by spammers.

The speakers, who joined the discussion by phone, received incessant calls from unknown sources, mostly from foreign numbers – or numbers made to look foreign – as if from the US.

As of Saturday, we remain in the dark about who was responsible and what their possible motivations were. One thing is clear, however. There are people who do not want us to talk about racism against Papuans because the issue relates to many unresolved human rights violations.

On February 17, the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM) released a report on its investigation of an incident that occurred five years ago called the Bloody Paniai case, in which high school students were gunned down during a protest in Paniai, Papua.

Carried the blame
Komnas HAM concluded that rank-and-file soldiers and their superiors carried the blame for the deaths of the students, aged 17 and 18, as well as for “torturing” another 21 protesting Papuans.

They called the deaths a “gross human rights violation”. The next day, Presidential Chief of Staff Moeldoko denied that this episode was a gross human rights violation.

There are those who say that it is ridiculous to compare the racism experienced by African-Americans to that experienced by Papuans. They claim racism in the US is worse.

But how can we possibly know that when freedom of speech has been muffled in the provinces of Papua and West Papua? How can we understand the gravity of the situation if we prevent Papuans from speaking and refuse to listen when they manage to make their voices heard?

What we know so far is that there are reports of extrajudicial killings, torture and persistent inequality in the social, economic, educational, health and technology spheres. That is easily bad enough, and we must end the injustice.

Others have said on social media that “All Lives Matter”, that racism against Papuans does not merit particular attention given the number of other victims of injustice in Indonesia.

Proponents of “All Lives Matter” seem to think there is no urgency to discuss racism against African-Americans in the US or against Papuans in Indonesia.

An urgent matter
They’re wrong. At the moment, racism against Papuans is an urgent matter in Indonesia, and as a victim of racism against Chinese-Indonesians, I’m saying we have to talk more about racism against Papuans.

Unfortunately, solidarity among victims does not come naturally to most people. I have learned from both textbooks and real life that the experience of being a victim does not necessarily mean you will extend your empathy to others.

There are even instances where victims of injustice do further injustice to others, like a man who is a victim of racism but beats his wife or children at home.

To join together in solidarity is a conscious choice. And we should do so because we believe in the cause: that human beings should be able to live safely amid their differences and give equal respect to everyone, regardless of skin color. No one should die or suffer because of their physical traits.

I make the call to fellow Indonesians, regardless of their race, to recognise racism against Papuans and talk about it more extensively and deeply.

Specifically, I call upon fellow Chinese-Indonesians. We are victims who have come a long way in improving the situation. Support from fellow victims of racism lends more credibility and force to the struggle to end discrimination once and for all.

Indonesia still has a lot to do to combat racism against Chinese-Indonesians, especially as the rising power of China somehow gives rise to negative sentiment against the Chinese diaspora around the world.

But this does not mean we lack the space and energy to fight for justice for other victims of racism. Papuan lives matter. Let’s talk about it often and loudly.

Evi Marianiis a writer for The Jakarta Post where this article was first published.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

When a newspaper with the authority of The New York Times chooses to publish a party-political essay calculated to further inflame the violence wracking cities across America, serious questions arise.

On June 3 the Times published in its opinion section an essay by a Republican senator from Arkansas, Tom Cotton, headlined “Send in the troops”.

It argued the case, plentifully coloured by party-political asides, in support of US President Donald Trump’s threat to mobilise the US military against the protests triggered by the police killing of George Floyd.

READ MORE: When Trump attacks the press, he attacks the American people and their Constitution

The newspaper’s decision provoked a stream of protests on social media, including from several journalists on its own staff. Some simply stated that they disagreed with Cotton. But for others, their objections ran far deeper.

Many expressed concern that it endangered the safety of Times journalists, in particular those who are black. In circumstances where the police are already turning their violence on journalists covering the protests, this is a well-founded objection.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, a correspondent for The New York Times Magazine who won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary last month, tweeted:

The NewsGuild of New York, the union that represents many Times journalists, said in a statement:

This is a particularly vulnerable moment in American history. Cotton’s Op-Ed pours gasoline on the fire. Media organiSations have a responsibility to hold power to account, not amplify voices of power without context and caution.

No coherent Times explanation
In the face of these cogent criticisms, it might have been expected The Times would publish a coherent and substantial account of its reasons for running the Cotton essay. It has not. It has left it to the editorial page editor, James Bennet, to respond, and he has contented himself with a Twitter thread.

His reasoning, if it can be dignified with the term, can be summarised in these statements from that thread:

Times Opinion owes it to our readers to show them counter-arguments, particularly those made by people in a position to set policy.

We understand that many readers find Senator Cotton’s argument painful, even dangerous. We believe that is one reason it requires public scrutiny and debate.

These reasons can be swiftly disposed of before moving on to questions he did not bother to mention.

Counter-arguments: by all means, but why from a party-political source at this time in American history, when party-political polarisation is as deep as at any time in the post-civil war era? Why not invite a non-party source, perhaps an expert in national security, to make the case for military intervention?

From a person in a position to set policy: just about the strongest reason not to run such a piece. It aligns the paper closely with those in power, an abrogation of the paper’s independence from government.

Scrutiny and debate: government is better scrutinised at arm’s length, and the public debate that has ensued is not about the merits of military intervention, but about the inflammatory content of the essay and the Times’s decision to run it.

Was the essay offered?
Now for the questions Bennet did not mention.

Did the Times solicit the essay from Cotton or did he offer it?

To what extent, if at all, did the Times consider the likely foreseeable consequences of running such a clearly partisan essay on so volatile an issue?

What consequences did it anticipate?

How did it balance the obvious risks of aggravating an already violent situation against the public-interest grounds Bennet has advanced?

Did it ask itself why a senator, with the powerful platform of the US Senate at his disposal, would seek to harness the authority of The New York Times to his cause?

Did it perceive that in lending its authority to this essay, it would be handing a valuable propaganda tool to the White House?

Unsettling public disregard
The newspaper’s blithe public disregard for these questions is unsettling.

In the three-and-a-half tumultuous years of the Trump presidency, America’s serious national newspapers – The Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times – have been a remarkable bulwark in defence of American democracy.

Along with the judiciary, they have discharged their institutional responsibilities fearlessly. They have kept an unflinching gaze on the Trump presidency and faced down his intimidatory tactics.

With Congress paralysed by partisan divisions, it is these two institutions that have made America’s democratic arrangements work.

Yet the strains are beginning to show.

The Washington Post reported this week, in the context of police attacks on the media covering the riots, that “the norms have broken down”.

In these circumstances, the decision by The Times to publish the Cotton essay is worse than just a bad editorial call.

At a critical juncture in this crisis, it suggests a failure of nerve.

By Dr Denis Muller, senior research fellow of the Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Thousands of people were protesting across Australia today to oppose the deaths of Indigenous people in police custody.

It comes as Black Lives Matter protests are held around the world after the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer in the US state of Minneapolis.

Rallies kicked off in Brisbane and Adelaide, along with some regional centres, earlier today.

READ MORE: Al Jazeera coronavirus live updates – China warns against travel to Australia

Big crowds have also gathered for protests in Melbourne and Sydney – after the New South Wales Court of Appeal ruled in favour of a last-ditch attempt to lawfully authorise a Sydney protest.

The decision means thousands of protesters marching in Sydney will be immune from prosecution for breaching public health orders.

Queensland Police estimate more than 10,000 people gathered in King George Square in Brisbane’s CBD for the protest, which kicked off at 1.00pm.

It was organised by Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) to show solidarity with the uprisings in the United States and Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people.

‘Oppressed and brutalised’
“All the people who have been oppressed, and exploited, and brutalised by the system and let us fight for a better world,” the organisation said in a statement.

“First Nations people in Australia are the most incarcerated people in the world.

“We make up less than 5 percent of the general population but account for 27 percent of the general prison population, 30 percent of women’s prisons and 70 percent of youth prisons nationally.”

In Adelaide, it is estimated that thousands turned out to the rally held at Victoria Square in the CBD, with many people seen wearing face masks to protect against the spread of coronavirus.

Protesters marched along King William Street calling for an end to Aboriginal deaths in custody.

They carried Aboriginal flags and placards saying “black lives matter”.

State police commissioner Grant Stevens yesterday granted an exemption from coronavirus restrictions for the rally.

Surge in coronavirus cases warning
But an infectious diseases expert has warned it could lead to a surge in coronavirus cases.

Australian National University professor Peter Collignon said people should take steps to protect themselves and others and adhere to social distancing.

He said that “it might be a week or at least two weeks” until we see whether there has been an outbreak of cases linked to the protest gatherings.

About 1000 people also gathered in Townsville, North Queensland, this morning, for a peaceful rally to stand against black deaths in custody.

Young and old Aboriginal people, including Wulgurukaba people, spoke to the crowd about the racism and mistreatment of their people in Australia for generations.

Speakers said the death of George Floyd was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Social distancing appeal
As the protest started to get underway in Melbourne, organisers asked the crowd to spread out along Bourke and Spring Streets to ensure there is social distancing.

Police yesterday warned organisers could be fined if coronavirus restrictions are breached.

A 20-person limit on outdoor gatherings still applies in Victoria, and Deputy Commissioner Shane Patton yesterday said organisers could be fined if the event breaks the Chief Health Officer’s directives.

Premier Daniel Andrews and Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton were among those calling for people to call off the protests due to concerns of a spike in coronavirus cases.

Protest marshals wearing fluoro vests were giving people hand sanitiser as they entered the parliamentary precinct.

Victoria police officers were lined up along the lower steps of the Parliament building with police officers on horseback behind them.

A 16-year-old Koori girl, who is white and Aboriginal, said she had seen both sides of racism.

‘I’m a witness to both sides’
“Growing up, both Aboriginal and white, I’m a witness to the two sides of racism,” she said.

She said it was more important to get her story out than to worry about her health.

“I think having my own voice put out there is so much more important than if I get coronavirus,” she said.

Another protester, Greg, said he was born in 1955 and Aboriginal deaths in custody had been going on since well before that.

He said he was not “overly” concerned about his health.

“If I get sick and die, I get sick and die,” he said.

“A mate of mine was killed by police. We were both 16. That’s why I’m here.

“No one did anything about what happened to him.”

Hand sanitiser handed out
The Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO) has been handing out hand sanitiser, gloves and masks ahead of the Melbourne protest.

VACCHO chief executive Jill Gallagher, who is also the former Victorian Treaty Advancement Commissioner, said the organisation was trying to minimise risk.

“I understand why people are still going to the protests,” she told ABC News Breakfast.

“When you look at the history of this country, when you look at the 432 deaths in custody since the 1990s – and that’s only the ones that have been counted.”

She encouraged people who are sick, immunocompromised or in carer roles to stay away from the event and said she would not be attending herself as she was looking after family.

“But if you must go, stay safe, and the harm-minimisation approach is the way to go. I mean, in an ideal world we wouldn’t want a George Floyd incident to happen in the middle of a pandemic,” she said.

Not enough understanding of ‘true history’
She said she did not think there was enough understanding of the “true history” of Australia.

“I hope it is a turning point. I really do,” she said.

“Because all you’ve got to do is look at what happened over there [in the US]. That’s not just because of George Floyd. That was the trigger. That was the last straw.

“They have had 500 years of brutality to African-Americans and you can see that and how it has manifested in their protests, the anger, the hurt and the frustrations. So, we have to deal with our past before we can move on.”

WAR representatives released a list of 14 demands for the protest, including the dismantling of the policing and justice system and the implementation of all 339 recommendations from the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

• This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.
• If you have symptoms of the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs) or call your GP – don’t show up at a medical centre.
• Follow RNZ’s coronavirus newsfeed

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

As the death of George Floyd, an African-American man who died while being arrested in the United States, sparks a global outcry, Indonesian rights advocates and young people have stepped forward to remind fellow citizens that racism has long been an issue at home as well.

The scene of Floyd being restrained by a cop employing a knee-to-neck hold is familiar for some, who compared the incident to the 2016 case of Obby Kogoya, a Papuan man whose head was reportedly stepped on by the police before he was arrested during the siege of a Papuan student dormitory in Yogyakarta.

The hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which has accompanied a call for street rallies worldwide, has since been adapted into #PapuanLivesMatter, with many turning to social media to urge Indonesians to also speak up against the racial discrimination and violence that Papuans have long endured.

READ MORE: Global fight against racism: Papuan lives also matter

“Many Indonesians support the hashtag #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd to denounce the actions of the American police over racial discrimination against black people. This is inversely proportional to when Papuans are racially abused,” Papuan activist Rico Tude tweeted on Tuesday.

Rico, who writes for Papuan media platform suarapapua.com, criticised the “double standards” of Indonesians in addressing the issue of racism abroad and at home, saying some might fear the risk of discussing sensitive topics related to Papua or lamented the history of Papuan political attitudes.

“Some people think that the racism experienced by Papuan people is a logical consequence that must be accepted by those who are considered separatists,” said Rico, who is also the spokesman for the Indonesian People’s Front for West Papua (FRI-WP).

While being far from the central government’s reach at home, many native Papuans have to put up with discrimination against their skin color and stereotypes while searching for a better life in other cities.

Rejection by landlords
Some students previously told The Jakarta Post that they faced rejection by landlords when looking for rooming houses to rent only because they were Papuans, while others had to endure racial slurs.

In other circumstances, such as when engaging in peaceful rallies to voice their political aspirations, many Papuans have reportedly faced physical intimidation and brutality by law enforcement personnel.

President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo has tried to reach out more with his development and infrastructure approach but critics and activists argued that Jakarta continues to fail in addressing human rights issues and the repression against their freedom of expression.

On Sunday, Indonesian human rights lawyer Veronica Koman and two native Papuans held an online discussion on how the #BlackLivesMatter campaign had echoed the Papuan movement against the long-standing racism and injustice they felt in Indonesian society.

They agreed that the string of protests against Floyd’s death were similar to what happened in Papua last year – when thousands rallied against racism after a Papuan student was called a “monkey” by security personnel in Surabaya, East Java.

“Dialogue to advocate for Papua-related issues is not enough. Unlike the Floyd case, racism in Papua continues because the public lacks knowledge of it,” said one of the speakers, Mikael Kudiai.

Cisco Mofu, another speaker, called for other Indonesians to open their minds and listen to the aspirations of Papuans and be willing to “criticise the state for its mistakes”.

Time to raise awareness
In a statement to the Post, Koman said it was time to raise awareness among the public, as people outside the activist circle, including celebrities and influencers, had also reached out for discussion.

Actress Hannah Al Rashid, for instance, is among those who have amplified such discussion and called for people to actively listen instead of making assumptions about the issue through her Twitter account.

“Let’s start speaking up for Papua. The government has been able to perpetuate impunity in Papua because the people haven’t spoken out. We do need your voices but please be mindful in amplifying Papuan voices,” Koman said.

Many internet users have also geared up to help disseminate information on issues surrounding Papua and shared links for people to sign petitions and donate to various causes to help Papuan people.

Young initiators, through online media platform Kudeta Mag, were among those who compiled the links and reading material on the website weneedtotalkaboutpapua.carrd.co.

“It should be our responsibility as Indonesians to feel obligated to understand our own country,” Kudeta Mag chief editor Jordinna Joaquin told the Post, “We need to talk, have these conversations, donate whenever and whatever we can and demand justice where it’s needed.”

Call for strong stand
Amnesty International Indonesia also called on the government to take a strong stand against systemic racism by guaranteeing Papuan rights to freedom of expression and stopping all forms of violence against those who peacefully express their opinions.

“The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis must be a reminder that discrimination and intimidation also happens to native Papuans in Indonesia, and most of the cases have yet to be resolved,” executive director Usman Hamid said on Wednesday.

The rights group also urged the authority to immediately release 51 Papuan prisoners of conscience.

“They do not deserve to be in jail because they did not commit any crimes. Justice must be upheld,” Usman said.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Three cartoonists had especially poignant takes on the tragic and toxic political aftermath of martyr George Floyd’s brutal killing under the knee of a white American policeman in Minneapolis last week.

The Boston Globe’s Christopher Weyant featured a split frame contrasting a red-capped “Make America Great Again” and a Covid Is A Hoax tee-short dangling his face mask while declaring: “You’re violating my freedom – I can’t breathe”.

On the other side of the frame is the accused policeman with his knee on Floyd’s neck as he gasps: “You’re violating my freedom … I … can’t breathe!”

READ MORE: President Trump and the news media

An unnamed Greek cartoonist shared by Elena Akrita showed the Statue of Liberty bearing the flame of freedom while extinguishing a life with a jackboot.

At the other end of the globe, in the South Pacific, New Zealand Herald’s Rod Emmerson depicted President Trump holding aloft a petrol can in his right hand instead of the Bible. In the background is the legend: In God We Trust: In Trump We Just Shake Our Heads.

His speech bubble says: “I’m completely out of my depth, and I’m not afraid to prove it.”

The disturbing week led the Herald to play on the infamous callousness of Emperor Nero as Rome burned with a digital update in its editorial: “Trump tweets while his country burns.” (The online version of the heading was much milder).

‘Darkest time for America’
“City and police officials are now more diverse than ever, yet America’s racial problems are deep-seated and there is a palpable impatience with incremental change,” lamented the Herald.

“It is probably the darkest time for America since 1968 when, amid the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, riots rocked the country, and Richard Nixon was elected.”

Amid the chaos, the savage treatment being meted out to the messengers was also unprecedented, with many media freedom watchdogs and news organisations condemning the attacks on reporters.

Among the most dramatic incidents was the arrest of a CNN news correspondent in Minneapolis – captured live on television – with the black reporter pleading what he had done to “deserve” being detained. It was an outrageous violation of human rights and the US First Amendment.

CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez was freed an hour later with a police apology but the harm had been done right in front of a global audience.

As he told a journalism colleague, his mother and grandmother were watching as the police manhandled him. And because he hadn’t been charged with anything there was no record of where he had been taken.

Paris-based global media freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned this and many other attacks in the strongest possible terms and called for immediate measures to protect journalists.

Trump’s ‘demonisation’ of media
It also blamed President Trump for his “demonisation” of the media for the attacks.

“Protests in at least 30 cities across the US following the police killing of George Floyd have resulted in violent attacks from police and protesters alike against journalists,” RSF stated. “Dozens of incidents have been reported so far, ranging from threats to serious physical assaults.”

At the time of a public statement on June 1, RSF said at least 68 incidents had been documented of attacks by police and protesters on media.

“They have been shot by rubber bullets and pepper balls, exposed to tear gas and pepper spray, beaten, threatened and intimidated and had their news vehicles vandalised, simply for doing their jobs,” said RSF.

“President Trump’s demonisation of the media for years has now come to fruition, with both the police and protesters targeting clearly identified journalists with violence and arrests,” said RSF’s secretary-general Christophe Deloire.

“It has long been obvious that this demonisation would lead to physical violence. RSF has warned about the consequences of this blatant hostility towards the media, and we are now witnessing an unprecedented outbreak of violence against journalists in the US.

“RSF calls on all US authorities to ensure the full protection of journalists and honor the country’s founding principles in respecting press freedom.”

Among serious attacks
Among the most serious attacks cited by RSF and circulated by Pacific Media Watch:

• “In Minneapolis, Linda Tirado, was left permanently blind in one eye after being struck by what she believes was a rubber bullet fired by police officers as she photographed protests.
• “In Pittsburgh, Ian Smith – a photojournalist for KDKA TV – posted to Twitter that he had been “attacked by protestors downtown by the arena. They stomped and kicked me. I’m bruised and bloody but alive. My camera was destroyed. Another group of protesters pulled me out and saved my life.”
• “In Phoenix, CBS reporter Briana Whitney was tackled live on air as a protester made a grab for her microphone.
• “In Washington, D.C., Fox News reporter Leland Vittert and his crew were punched, hit by projectiles, and chased by protesters who had gathered outside the White House.
• “In Minneapolis, Australian 9News US correspondent Tim Arvier was detained by police at gunpoint.”

In some “fresh horrors” reported by the independent Australian media website Crikey:

Down Under rallies
Crikey also reported that “on the home front”, the ABC had reported that NSW police were investigating an officer after he was filmed “kicking the legs out of an Indigenous teenager”.

“The news comes as Nine reports that over a thousand people marched in Sydney last night ahead of even more protests this weekend, while CNN lists a number of other solidarity protests across countries, including New Zealand, England, Mexico, Syria and more.

“Just remember to wear your covid-19 masks, comrades!”

However, the week has ended with some media good news after the covid-19 shakedown and huge loss of jobs in both Australia and New Zealand – AAP Newswire has been saved at the 11th hour with a promised buy-out by a group of investors and philanthropists headed by former News Corp chief executive Peter Tonagh. Between 75 and 90 jobs may be saved as a result.

As the Australian media union MEAA says, the proposed purchase is a “crucial recognition” of the role AAP plays in the Australian – and Pacific – media ecosystem.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The organisers of Black Lives Matter protests in several main centres will not be prosecuted.

On Monday, thousands gathered at several events around the country for Black Lives Matter marches in solidarity with protesters in the United States after the police killing of George Floyd.

The protests prompted calls from Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters to prosecute the event organisers for flouting alert level 2 rules around social distancing and mass gathering rules.

READ MORE: US protesters defy curfew as Trump decries ‘lowlifes’

National Party leader Todd Muller told RNZ he thought the Black Lives Matter protests made a mockery of the Covid-19 alert levels and accused the government of sending mixed messages.

Assistant Commissioner Lauano Sue Schwalger said police would speak to organisers to set clear expectations for any further protests.

She said organisers made an effort to ensure participants complied with level 2 rules, such as providing hand sanitiser and encouraging people to maintain social distancing.

“It was an unfortunate reality, with the numbers of people who attended, that this quickly became impractical.”

Schwalger said police always acted in accordance with the situation at hand.

“In these circumstances, it was probable that attempts to enforce alert level 2 would have caused tension in an otherwise peaceful protest, without being effective to enhance physical distancing, given the numbers in attendance.”

• This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.
• If you have symptoms of the coronavirus, call the NZ Covid-19 Healthline on 0800 358 5453 (+64 9 358 5453 for international SIMs) or call your GP – don’t show up at a medical centre.
• Follow RNZ’s coronavirus newsfeed

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The death of African-American man George Floyd at the hands of police has sparked protests across the United States and inspired many people to reflect on our own history of police violence against Indigenous people in Australia and New Zealand.

After thousands marched across New Zealand on Monday, a series of rallies and vigils are planned in Australian cities this week, and many have wondered: how should we safely protest during a pandemic?

As an infection prevention researcher, I am, of course, genuinely worried by the prospect of large crowds gathering. But I also completely understand why people want to go and make their feelings known on racism – not just in Australia and New Zealand, but internationally.

READ MORE: US protesters teargassed for Trump photo-op

It is a clash when we are trying to manage covid-19 and puts us in a dilemma.

But I can’t stand and judge people who want to go.

Colleagues in the US who are so moved by what’s happening there are forgoing their social distancing and putting themselves and their colleagues at risk by attending the protests. For them, it is a personal decision and a risk they are prepared to take.

In New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said while “I utterly understand” why people had marched, New Zealand had social distancing rules in place to protect people’s health – and the June 1 marches were “a clear breach of them”.

If we had one person, one person in that crowd, just think what could happen there because we’ve seen it before […] I understand the strength of feeling and I understand the sentiment and I understand that sense of urgency that everyone felt. But my job is to look after the country’s health as well.

NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says while she doesn’t want to stop peaceful protests, the June 1 Black Lives Matter protests across NZ were a “clear breach” of COVID-19 rules.

In Australia, people should remember many states have strict rules about public gatherings and it’s likely you’ll be breaching them if you attend a protest. In Victoria, there’s a limit of 20 people at an outdoor gathering. For NSW the limit is 10, while in Queensland the limit is 20.

Remember, coronavirus is spread via close contact, so you are significantly increasing your risk of infection if you are in a large crowd.

All that said, if you’re considering attending a protest, here are four things to think about

1. Is there another way I can show support?
Given I’m an infection prevention researcher, working to prevent the spread of covid-19, I have to say this: if there is any other way you can show support, other than attending a mass gathering – whether that’s donating to a group doing good work, doing any sort of online protest or whatever option you can find – you should consider it.

Think about whether you yourself are at higher risk – by being older or immuno-compromised, for example – and whether there is a more sustainable way for you to support a movement you care about.

2. Think about how you’ll get there
Plan your trip to and from the protest carefully. Avoid crowded public transport – consider driving or riding a bike if possible – and follow social distancing rules if you must travel by bus, train or tram.

Make sure you bring hand sanitiser and use it liberally. Wash hands as soon as you get home.

3. If you go, observe social distancing

If you’re in Australia, download and use the COVIDSafe app. Try as best you can to observe social distancing at any event you attend. That means staying at least 1.5 metres apart from everyone else (or 2 metres in New Zealand) whether you are standing in an open space or marching down a street.

Remember that coronavirus is spread by droplets released when people breathe, talk, cough, sneeze, sing or shout in close proximity to others. No hugging to demonstrate solidarity.

When you get lots of people together and emotions run high, things can go awry very quickly. I’d be prepared to leave the demonstration if I started to get concerned about the proximity of people around me. There’s a risk more people will turn up than you or the event organisers anticipated; if there are bigger crowds than expected, be prepared to make a decision to head home.

A mask alone will not protect you, they’re only one piece of the armoury and are only useful if you socially distance and wash hands as well. If you throw yourself into a situation where you are close to other people, a mask will not be enough to protect you or others.

4. Do not attend if you feel unwell or have any covid-19 symptoms
This should go without saying: absolutely stay home, no matter how strongly you feel about the issue, if you have any symptoms, such as a sore throat or a cough.

Indigenous Australians are an at-risk demographic for covid-19, as are Māori and Pasifika, so you need to think carefully about the risk you may pose to others if you turn up while experiencing symptoms.

If there was to be a small cluster in one of these protests, and the virus was passed to an Indigenous community, the effects could be devastating.

If you feel that compelled to attend a demonstration, think about anything you can do to minimise the chances of spread, or you will undo the gains Australia and New Zealand have made in keeping the coronavirus spread under control.

Dr Philip Russo, is associate professor and director of Cabrini Monash University Department of Nursing Research, Monash University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The protests were triggered by the killing by Minneapolis police officers of an unarmed black man, George Floyd, as they arrested him on May 25.

So far at least 68 incidents have been documented of attacks by police and protesters alike against journalists covering the protests.

They have been shot by rubber bullets and pepper balls, exposed to tear gas and pepper spray, beaten, threatened and intimidated and had their news vehicles vandalised, simply for doing their jobs.

“President Trump’s demonization of the media for years has now come to fruition, with both the police and protesters targeting clearly identified journalists with violence and arrests,” said Christophe Deloire, RSF’s secretary general.

“It has long been obvious that this demonisation would lead to physical violence. RSF has warned about the consequences of this blatant hostility towards the media, and we are now witnessing an unprecedented outbreak of violence against journalists in the US.

“RSF calls on all US authorities to ensure the full protection of journalists and honour the country’s founding principles in respecting press freedom,” Deloire added.

Among serious attacks
Among the most serious attacks:

·       In Minneapolis, Linda Tirado, has been left permanently blind in one eye after being struck by what she believes was a rubber bullet fired by police officers as she photographed protests.

·       In Pittsburgh, Ian Smith – a photojournalist for KDKA TV – posted to Twitter that he had been “attacked by protesters downtown by the arena. They stomped and kicked me. I’m bruised and bloody but alive. My camera was destroyed. Another group of protesters pulled me out and saved my life.”

·       In Phoenix, CBS reporter Briana Whitney was tackled live on air as a protester made a grab for her microphone.

·       In Washington, D.C., Fox News reporter Leland Vittert and his crew were punched, hit by projectiles, and chased by protesters who had gathered outside the White House.

Reports are also emerging of arrests and detention of journalists by police.

In Minneapolis, Australian 9News US correspondent Tim Arvier was detained by police at gunpoint.

Arrested for ‘failure to disperse’
In Las Vegas, freelance photojournalist Bridget Bennett was arrested for “failure to disperse” and held overnight while working on assignment for AFP.

Ellen Schmidt, a photojournalist at the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was also arrested and held overnight in Las Vegas.

RSF calls for urgent action by US authorities to ensure the safety of journalists covering the continuing protests, including a moratorium on the arrests of journalists and immediate guidance to police making it clear that journalists are not to be shot at or otherwise directly targeted by crowd-control measures, and that journalists must be protected from violent attacks by protesters.

The US is ranked 45th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2020 World Press Freedom Index.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Thousands of New Zealanders have joined large numbers of Americans in protesting following the killing of Minneapolis man George Floyd.

In Auckland, Aotea Square overflowed yesterday with people before thousands marched down Queen Street towards the US consulate building.

Organisers said the aim was simple,”we want to put pressure on our government from the local level, right up to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to publicly condemn the acts of violence and state-sanctioned murder against African Americans in the United States”.

READ MORE: George Floyd protesters undeterred by curfews in US cities

Protests have been held in more than 30 cities across the US and throughout the world after disturbing video surfaced showing bystanders pleading with a white police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, a black man, as he gasped for breath.

Floyd died from the incident, the latest in a string of deaths of black men and women at the hands of US police.

Nigerian-Kiwi Mary Adeosun drove up from Hamilton for the protest.

She was in tears as she spoke to our reporter: “I really feel for my skin-folk, for the innocent lives that have been taken… I’m so far away in this country and I’m seeing people who look like me dying [in the US]”.

Hobson Hohepa flew his Tino Rangatiratanga flag high at the protest: “[Racism] happens here in our country. It happens to us. It happens to me. I’ve had enough.”

Ricky Wilkins is an African-American from Los Angeles, California. He has been living in New Zealand for the past seven months.

“I feel loved. Everybody wants to be us but no one wants to care for us. It’s just amazing to see in Aotearoa how people are representing and showing us love.”

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

#BlackLivesMatter

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz