New Zealand’s police commissioner says he understands the potential impact the country’s criminal deportees have on smaller Pacific Island nations.

Commissioner Richard Chambers’ comments on RNZ Pacific Waves come as the region’s police bosses gathered for the annual Pacific Islands Chiefs of Police conference in Waitangi.

The meeting, which is closed to media, began yesterday.

Chambers said a range of issues were on the agenda, including transnational organised crime and the training of police forces.

Across the Pacific, the prevalence of methamphetamine and its role in driving social, criminal and health crises have thrust the problem of organised crime into the spotlight.

Commissioner Chambers said New Zealand had offered support to its fellow Pacific nations to combat transnational organised crime, in particular around the narcotics trade.

Deportation policies
However, the country’s own transnational crime advisory group also identified the country’s deportation policies as a “significant contributor to the rise of organised crime in the Pacific”.

In 2022, a research report showed that New Zealand returned 400 criminal deportees to Pacific nations between 2013 and 2018.

The report from the Lowy Institute also said criminal deportees from New Zealand, as well as Australia and the US, were a significant contributor to transnational crime in the Pacific.

When Chambers was asked about the issue and whether New Zealand’s criminal deportation policy undermined work against organised crime across the region, he said it had not been raised with him directly.

“The criminal networks that we are dealing with, in particular those such as the cartels out of South America, the CJNG [cartels] and Sinaloa cartels, who really do control a lot of the cocaine and also methamphetamine trades, also parts of Asia with the Triads,” Commissioner Chambers said.

“I know that the Pacific commissioners that I work with are very, very focused on what we can do to combat and disrupt a lot of that activity at source, in both Asia and South America.

“So that’s where our focus has been, and that’s what the commissioners have been asking me for in terms of support.”

Pacific nation difficulties
He said he understood the difficulties law enforcement in Pacific nations faced regarding criminal deportees, as New Zealand faced similar challenges under Australia’s deportation policy.

In New Zealand, the country’s returned nationals from Australia are known as 501 deportations, named after the section of the Australian Migration Act which permits their deportation due to criminal convictions.

These individuals have often spent the majority of their lives in Australia and have no family or ties to New Zealand but are forced to return due to Australia’s immigration laws.

New Zealand’s authorities have tracked how these deportees — who number in the hundreds — have contributed significantly to the country’s increasingly sophisticated and established organised crime networks over the past decade.

Chambers said that because police dealt with the real impacts of Australia’s 501 law, he could relate to what his Pacific counterparts faced.

“I understand from the New Zealand perspective [which is] the impact that New Zealand nationals returning to our country have on New Zealand, and the reality is, they’re offending, they’re re-offending.

“I suspect it’s no different from our Pacific colleagues in their own countries. And it may be something that we can talk about.”

This week’s conference was scheduled to finish tomorrow. Speakers due to appear included Interpol Secretary-General Valdecy Urquiza and Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General Baron Waqa.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Hope for freedom for Palestinians remains high among a group of trauma-struck New Zealanders in Cairo.

In spite of extensive planning, the Global March To Gaza (GMTG) delegation of about 4000 international aid volunteers was thwarted in its mission to walk from Cairo to Gaza to lend support.

The land of oranges and pyramids became the land of autocracy last week as peace aid volunteers — young, middle-aged, and elderly — were herded like cattle and cordoned behind fences.

Their passports were initially seized — and later returned. Several New Zealanders were among those dragged and beaten.

While ordinary Egyptians showed “huge support” for the GMTG, the militant Egyptian regime showed its hand in supporting Israel rather than Palestine.

A member of the delegation, Natasha*, said she and other members pursued every available diplomatic channel to ensure that the peaceful, humanitarian, march would reach Gaza.

Moved by love, they were met with hate.

Violently attacked
“When I stepped toward the crowd’s edge and began instinctually with heart break to chant, ‘Free Palestine,’ I was violently attacked by five plainclothes men.

“They screamed, grabbed, shoved, and even spat on me,” she said.

Tackled, she was dragged to an unmarked van. She did not resist, posed no threat, yet the violence escalated instantly.

“I saw hatred in their eyes.”

Another GMTG member, a woman who tried to intervene was also “viciously assaulted”. She witnessed at least three other women and two men being attacked.

The peacemakers escaped from the unmarked van the aggressors were distracted, seemingly confused about their destination, she said.

It is now clear that from the beginning Egyptian State forces and embedded provocateurs were intent on dismantling and discrediting the GMTG.

Authorities as provocateurs
The peace participants witnessed plainclothed authorities act as provacateurs, “shoving people, stepping on them, throwing objects” to create a false image for media.

New Zealand actor Will Alexander said the experience had inflated rather than deflated his passion for human rights, and compassion for Palestinians.

“This is only a fraction of what Palestinians experience everyday. Palestinians pushed into smaller and smaller areas are murdered for wanting to stand on their own land,” he said.

“The reason that ordinary New Zealanders like us need to put our bodies on the line is because our government has failed to uphold its obligations under the Genocide Convention.

“Israel has blatantly breached international law for decades with total impunity.”

While the New Zealanders are all safe, a small number of people in the wider movement had been forcibly ‘disappeared’,” said GMTG New Zealand member Sam Leason.

Their whereabouts was still unknown, he said.

Arab members targeted
“It must be emphasised that it is primarily — and possibly strictly — Arab members of the March who are the targets of the most dramatic and violent excesses committed by the Egyptian authorities, including all forced disappearances.”

This did, however, continuously add to the mounting sense of stress, tension, anxiety and fear, felt by the contingent, he said.

“Especially given the Egyptian authorities’ disregard to their own legal system, which leaves us blindsided and in a thick fog of uncertainty.”

Moving swiftly through the streets of Cairo in the pitch of night, from hotel to hotel and safehouse to safehouse, was a “surreal and dystopian” experience for the New Zealanders and other GMTG members.

The group says that the genocide cannot be sustained when people from around the world push against the Israeli regime and support the people on the ground with food and healthcare.

“For 20 months our hearts have raced and our eyes have filled in unison with the elderly, men, women, and children, and the babies in Palestine,” said Billie*, a participant who preferred, for safety reasons, not to reveal their surname.

“If we do not react to the carnage, suffering and complete injustice and recognise our shared need for sane governance and a liveable planet what is the point?”

Experienced despair
Aqua*, another New Zealand GMTG member, had experienced despair seeing the suffering of Palestinians, but she said it was important to nurture hope, as that was the only way to stop the genocide.

“We cling to every glimmer of hope that presents itself. Like an oasis in a desert devoid of human emotion we chase any potential igniter of the flame of change.”

Ava Mulla, said from Cairo, that the group was inspired by the courage of the Palestinians.

“They’ve been fighting for freedom and justice for decades against the world’s strongest powers. They are courageous and steadfast.”

Mulla referred to the “We Were Seeds” saying inspired by Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos.

“We are millions of seeds. Every act of injustice fuels our growth,” she said.

Helplessness an illusion
The GMTG members agreed that “impotence and helplessness was an illusion” that led to inaction but such inaction allowed “unspeakable atrocities” to take place.

“This is the holocaust of our age,” said Sam Leason.

“We need the world to leave the rhetorical and symbolic field of discourse and move promptly towards the camp of concrete action to protect the people of Palestine from a clear campaign of extermination.”

Saige England is an Aotearoa New Zealand journalist, author, and poet, member of the Palestinian Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA), and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

*Several protesters quoted in this article requested that their family names not be reported for security reasons. Ava Mulla was born in Germany and lives in Aotearoa with her partner, actor Will Alexander. She studied industrial engineering and is passionate about innovative housing solutions for developing countries. She is a member of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA).

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Exiled University of the South Pacific vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia says he is thrilled at the prospect of returning to Fiji.

Speaking to The Fiji Times from Los Angeles in the United States yesterday, he said Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka — when he was in opposition — made a commitment to pay Fiji’s outstanding debt of $90 million to USP and to allow him to return to Fiji.

“Mr Rabuka said it, National Federation Party leader Professor Biman Prasad said it, and the Social Democratic Liberal Party leader also said it,” Professor Ahluwalia said.

“So it’s part of all three parties’ manifestos and part of their public statements, so we as a university are delighted that this amount that has been outstanding for so long will finally come to the university.

“It’s excellent news, not just for the Fijian students but for the entire region because the region has been carrying Fijian students for quite a while and there will now be a chance for us to do a lot of things that we have deferred and not been able to do, particularly issues around maintenance.

“It also means we can now aggressively look for quality academic staff.”

Rabuka issued a statement on Boxing Day saying the prohibition order against Professor Ahluwalia had been lifted and he was welcome to travel to Fiji at any time.

Professor Ahluwalia and his wife Sandra Price claimed that on Wednesday February 3, 2021, 15 people made up of immigration officials and police stormed into their USP home and forcefully removed them at about 11.30pm.

They claimed they were driven the same night to Nadi International Airport and deported on the morning of Thursday, February 4, to Australia.

The FijiFirst government on February 4, 2022 issued a statement that the Immigration Department had ordered Professor Aluwahlia and his partner Sandra Price to leave Fiji with immediate effect following alleged “continuous breaches” by both individuals of Section 13 of the Immigration Act.

Government said under Section 13 of the Immigration Act 2003, no foreigner was permitted to conduct themselves in a manner prejudicial to the peace, defence, public safety, public order, public morality, public health, security, or good government of Fiji.

Fiji now ‘free country’
RNZ Pacific reports that Finance Minister Professor Biman Prasad said all three parties in the coalition had promised this in their election campaigns and manifestos.

The former FijiFirst government have withheld the payments since 2019 over a protracted battle with Professor Ahluwalia, now operating in exile out of Samoa.

“They didn’t like a man who was doing the right thing who exposed corruption within the university,” Professor Prasad said.

“And it has done you know, to some extent, terrible damage not only to the university, but also the unity in the whole region.”

In July, the two unions representing staff at the university said the Fiji government owes the institution F$78.4 million and the debt has increased since then.

“Well, I can’t tell you the timetable, but all I can say is…that the university will receive the appropriate funding, as well as the government will pay what is due as a result of the previous government withholding the grant to the university,” Professor Prasad said.

His revelation comes after the government statement by Prime Minister Rabuka inviting Professor Ahluwalia to return to Fiji.

Personal apology
Rabuka said he wanted to apologise to Professor Ahluwalia in person upon his arrival for the way he had been treated by Fiji.

The prime minister has also invited the widow of exiled Fijian academic, Professor Brij Lal, who passed away on Christmas Day last year to bring home his ashes for burial at Tabia near Labasa.

Professor Prasad said they look forward to welcoming home more Fijians and expatriates exiled during Voreqe Bainimarama’s 16-year-reign.

“Fiji is now a free country. We will welcome everyone who wants to come to Fiji. No one should fear about any kind of vindictiveness or harassment,” Professor Prasad said.

“That is what we promised during our campaign, and that is what this government will deliver.”

Felix Chaudhary is a Fiji Times reporter. Republished with Fiji Times permission. This article is also republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

Professor thrilled over #USP return – #Fiji to pay $90m #university debt #AsiaPacificReport @fijitimes #rnzpacific @pal_vcp @ShailendraBSing @wansolwara @USPWansolwara @GeraldP87 #Fijipol #education #SitiveniRabuka @bimanprasad https://t.co/bC0ECuzF7d pic.twitter.com/laTlgEH3bf

— David Robie (@DavidRobie) December 26, 2022

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The greenlight has been given to University of the South Pacific vice-chancellor, Professor Pal Ahluwalia, and Dr Padma Lal, to return to Fiji by Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka.

Professor Ahluwalia was deported in 2021 and Dr Lal — widow of the late leading Fiji academic Professor Brij Lal — was refused entry to Fiji along with her husband.

Exiled Professor Ahluwalia currently resides in Samoa and Dr Lal in Australia.

Rabuka has made it clear today that both of them are free to enter the country.

“I am ready to meet Dr Lal and Professor Ahluwalia personally,” he said.

“I will apologise on behalf of the people of Fiji for the way they were treated.”

Dr Lal had been prevented from coming to Fiji with her husband’s ashes for them to be taken to his birthplace at Tabia, near Labasa.

First anniversary
Today marks the first anniversary of Professor Lal’s death.

Rabuka said prohibition orders against Professor Brij Lal and Dr Lal, as well as Professor Ahluwalia, were “unreasonable and inhumane” and should never have been made.

He had promised his government would bring to an end the injustices suffered by Professor Ahluwalia, and Professor Lal.

“I received a clarification today from the Department of Immigration that neither Dr Padma Lal nor Professor Ahluwalia were the subject of written prohibition orders,” he said.

Josefa Babitu is a Fiji Sun reporter. Republished from the Fiji Sun.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The New Zealand government is considering more action to crack down on violent gang behaviour but has dismissed the idea of a ban on wearing gang patches in public.

There have been a number of shootings and arson attacks in Auckland and Northland in recent weeks linked to escalating tensions between the Killer Beez and Tribesmen.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern told Morning Report the government had asked police what other tools they wanted.

She said she expected to receive further advice soon.

She said changes had been made to widen the criteria for asset seizures and firearm prevention orders legislation was currently before select committee.

It was clear that the current outbreak of violence centred on escalating tensions between two gangs and the clear advice from experts was about the need “to come down hard on that behaviour”.

The police had taken such action with multiple arrests, multiple search warrants executed and 600 rounds of ammunition seized.

‘More tools needed?’
“We’ve asked them [police] to tell us in that environment are there more tools that you need,” she said.

The government had met them again last week and she was expecting more advice from them soon.

“We are moving as fast as we can where the police identify issues we can support them on.”

New policy would not go before cabinet later today — changes did not happen in a day or a week but the government was seeking to have the work expedited.

Asked if it would include increased stop and search powers and banning gang patches in public as suggested by opposition National Party leader Christopher Luxon on Saturday, she said the police were in the best position to identify what would work best.

“This idea of gang patch bans — it’s been tried in other countries. It’s often a reactionary response you can see from politicians and when they’ve gone back and looked at whether it’s made a difference, review after review in different parts, for instance in Australia, has proved it hasn’t.

“Why don’t we put our energy into things that are going to make a difference.”

She invited National to bring forward other ideas on what would help solve violence from gangs.

“We will be engaging in the ones that the police tell us will make the biggest difference.”

Asked about changes affecting Māori in particular, she said any proposed legislation always went through a Bill of Rights process.

“But what we also always factor in are New Zealanders’ rights and their sense of safety and at present we see an escalation in tensions between gangs. Their behaviour includes examples of blatant lawlessness and that needs to be addressed.”

Reception from new Australian government pleasing
Ardern has hailed her visit to Sydney as a “reset” of a trans-Tasman relationship which had soured in recent years — primarily over Australia’s intransigent stance on its “501” deportation policy.

Following talks with new Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, after which he said he had “listened” to New Zealand’s concern, Ardern said it was a significant improvement on any feedback she had received from Canberra previously.

She agreed Australia has stated its clear intention to continue to deport people which was exactly the same as New Zealand’s approach.

It was those “at the extreme end” of the spectrum who were in effect Australians with no connections to Aotearoa that the government was most concerned about being sent here, she said.

It had secured from Albanese a commitment to look at that aspect.

“We’ve not received a reception like that to these issues for a number of years.”

With a ministerial meeting due to be held in three weeks Ardern said she will be looking for signs of progress but it was too soon to expect a timeframe for action.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz