“One can oppose a hateful regime and, at the same time, oppose an unjustified and dangerous military intervention,” says Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.

“I once again call for immediate de-escalation, respect for international law, and the urgency of resuming dialogue.”

While some governments around the world have easily managed to express their opposition to the unlawful military attacks by Israel and the US and their opposition to the Iranian regime, shamefully New Zealand has failed to follow their example.

Instead, the government has issued a statement that condemns only Iran; “acknowledges” the military strikes were “designed to prevent Iran from continuing to threaten international peace and security”; and calls for “adherence to international law” — apparently blissfully unaware that the attacks comprise multiple breaches of international law.

In an interview on RNZ, the PM repeatedly responded to the question “Does New Zealand support these attacks or not?” by reading out “We think Iran is evil, we think it’s been repressing its own people.

“We think it’s been arming proxies and terrorist organisations. We think it has been developing its ballistic and nuclear programmes and years of diplomacy hasn’t actually paid any fruits.”

He also said more than once that New Zealand’s position was the same as Australia’s — the Australian PM has said they “support the United States acting to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons”.

Bizarre spectre
Which, aside from ignoring the US’s stated desire for forced regime change in Iran, raises the bizarre spectre of two nuclear-armed states attacking another state in case it might develop nuclear weapons — even though Iran is a state party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (#NPT), which Israel is not, and has opened its nuclear facilities to the #IAEA, which Israel has not. Indeed, the only state in the Middle East that does have stockpiles of nuclear weapons (entirely undeclared and unsupervised) is Israel.

New Zealand’s moral failure to condemn these military strikes, but instead to continue describing the Iranian regime as “evil” or “bad actors” as though that somehow makes armed attacks on a sovereign nation to assassinate its leaders to force regime change okay — regardless of civilian casualties — shows how far it has now moved from even the pretence of applying international law to the actions of its military friends and partners.

And what a missed opportunity to point out the urgent necessity for the elimination of ALL #NuclearWeapons — so much for New Zealand’s alleged commitment to a nuclear weapons-free world, and its promotion of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons #TPNW / #NuclearBan and the NPT.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Peacemonger is a collection of essays about the much travelled Aotearoa peace activist and researcher Owen Wilkes, who died in May 2005. Wilkes was an extraordinary peace campaigner who discovered a foreign spy base at Tangimoana and was once charged with espionage in Norway and again while on a cycling holiday in Sweden.

After he took up beekeeping near Karamea on the West Coast in 1983, it was discovered that Customs was helping the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service to read his mail, apparently worried about his legendary ability to snuffle out secret installations by foreign powers in countries from New Zealand to Norway.

They were right to note his impact – this book explains just how enormously influential Wilkes was.

Many of these short essays are by big names in the Aotearoa peace firmament, such as Maire Leadbeater, Murray Horton, David Robie, Nicky Hager and Peter Wills. Each chapter contains gems; some hilarious, others sobering.

Wilkes was a rare beast, a man who could be, as Mark Derby writes, “unpretentious, fearless, indefatigable, at times insufferable”.

Hager, a phenomenal investigative journalist, has contributed the chapter “The Wilkes How-to Guide to Public Interest Researching’.

Coming from Hager, one of the greatest public interest researchers in the country, this should be catnip to a new generation of proto-Hagers, Thunbergs and Wilkeses.

The last chapter, “Memories of Owen”, was written by his partner, peace activist May Bass.

It is a heartfelt send-off to a human comet who lit up everything he touched, one who may never have realised in his arc across the sky what a void he left behind him, not just in the peace movement, but in the hearts of his friends and loved ones.

Jenny Nicholls writes reviews for The Listener and this review has been republished from the Waiheke Weekender with permission. She is also a graphic designer: designandtype.org

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Whistleblower Owen Wilkes was a tireless and formidable researcher for the Pacific, peace and disarmament. Before the internet, he combed publicly available sources on weapons systems and defence strategy.

In 1968, he revealed the secretive military function of a proposed satellite tracking station in the South Island, and while working in Sweden he was charged with espionage and deported after photographing intriguing but publicly visible installations.

In a new book about his life, Peacemonger, edited by May Bass and Mark Derby, Nicky Hager writes about Wilkes’ research techniques:

Owen Wilkes was an outstanding researcher, a role model of how someone can make a difference in the world by good research. But how did he actually do it? Owen managed to study complex subjects such as Cold War communications systems, secret intelligence facilities and foreign military activities in the Pacific.

There are many important and useful lessons we can learn from how he did this work. The world needs more public interest researchers, on militarism and other subjects. Owen’s self-taught research techniques are like a masterclass in how it is done.

Lots of information isn’t secret, just hard to find
Owen worked for many years, sitting at his large desk at the Peace Movement office in Wellington, researching the military communications systems set up to launch and fight nuclear war. How was this possible?

We are a bit conditioned currently to imagine the only option would be leaked documents from a whistleblower. The first secret of Owen’s success is that he had learned that large amounts of information on these subjects can be found and pieced together from obscure but publicly available sources.

The heart of his research method was long hours spent poring over US government records and military industry magazines, gathering the precious crumbs of detail like someone panning for gold.

Behind the large desk were shelves and shelves of open-topped file boxes, each with a cryptic title. These boxes were full of photocopied documents and handwritten notes from his researching. This may all sound very pre-internet; indeed it was largely pre-digital.

But what Owen was doing would today be called “open source” research and his work is far superior to that carried out by many people with Google and other digital tools at their fingertips. Probably his favourite source of all was a publicly available US defence magazine called Aviation Week and Space Technology. The magazine (now online) is written for military staff and arms manufacturers, keeping them informed about developments in weapons, aircraft and “C3I” systems, which stands for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence systems: one of Owen’s main areas of speciality.

The magazine also covered Owen’s speciality of “space based” military systems, such as military communication and surveillance satellites. In Owen’s files, which can be viewed at the National Library in Wellington, Aviation Week and Space Technology appears often. In a file box called USA Space Systems is a clipping from 1983 about the US Air Force awarding a contract for a ballistic missile early warning system (nuclear war-fighting equipment). The article revealed that the early warning system would be based at air force bases in Alaska, Greenland and Fylingdales, England — three clues about US foreign military activities.

By reading and storing away details from numerous such articles, spanning many years, Owen built up a more and more detailed understanding of military and intelligence systems.

The other endlessly useful source Owen used was US Congress and Senate hearings and reports about the US military budget. This is where each year the US military spells out its military construction plans, new weapons, technology programmes and the rest; often with figures broken down to the level of individual countries and military bases.

Senior military officials appear at hearings to explain the threats and strategies that justify the spending. As with the military magazines, Owen systematically mined these reports year after year for interesting detail.

He was especially keen on the US Congress’ Committee on Appropriations, Subcommittee on Military Construction Appropriations. His files on US antisatellite weapons, for instance, contain a document from this subcommittee about new Anti-Satellite System Facilities (project number 11610) based at Langley Air Force base, Virginia. It had been approved by the president in the renewed Cold War of the mid-1980s to target Soviet satellites. Details like this were pieces in a 1000-piece jigsaw puzzle.

When he was based at the Peace Movement Aotearoa office in Wellington, from 1983 until about 1992, Owen spent long hours at the US Embassy library studying the Military Construction Appropriations and other US government documents. Each year the library received copies of the documents as microfiche (microphotos of each page on a film). Owen was a familiar visitor, hunched over the microfiche reader making notes and printing out interesting pages.

Many times this gave the first clue of construction somewhere in the world, pointing to that country hosting some new US military, nuclear or intelligence activity. The annual US military appropriation information is available to a researcher today. In fact it is now more easily accessed since it is online. But, if anything, Owen’s pre-digital techniques make it clearer how this research is done well. It’s a good reminder that the best sources of information are most often not in the first 10 or 20 hits of a Google search, the point where many people stop looking.

Experience and persistence
An important ingredient in all these methods is persistence. The methods usually work best if, like Owen, a researcher sticks at them over time. Sticking at a subject means you start to recognise names and places in an otherwise boring document, appreciate the significance of some fragment of information and understand the big picture into which each piece of information fits.

Someone who reads deeply and studies a subject over a number of years can in effect become, like Owen, an expert. They may, like him, have no formal university qualifications. But they can know more about their subject than nearly anyone else, which is a good definition of an expert. They recognise the names and places and appreciate the significance of new evidence.

A textbook example of this was when Owen returned to New Zealand in the early 1980s and went to see a recently discovered secret military site near the beach settlement of Tangimoana in the Manawatu.

Owen, who had spent years studying secret bases around the world, was the New Zealander most likely to know what he was looking at. There, on one side of the base, was a large circle of antenna poles: a CDAA circularly-disposed antenna array. It instantly told him the Tangimoana facility was a signals intelligence base. It had the same equipment and was part of the same networks as the bases he had studied in Norway and Sweden.

Ensuring his research was noticed
The purpose of Owen’s work was to make a difference to the issues he researched. A final and vital part of the work was getting attention for the findings of his research. Owen often spoke in the news and he wrote about the issues he was studying. Research, writing and speaking up are essential ingredients in political change. The part of this he probably enjoyed most was travelling and speaking in public to interested groups.

During the 1980s, he had major speaking tours to countries including Japan, the Philippines, Australia and Canada (and often around New Zealand). During these trips he would present information about military and intelligence activities in those countries. A 1985 trip to Canada, which he shared with prominent Palau leader Roman Bedor, was typical. He was in Canada for seven weeks, speaking in most parts of the country and numerous times on radio and television.

One of the things he emphasised was that Canadians, as residents of a Pacific country, should be thinking about what was going on in the Pacific. One of Owen’s recurrent themes was the importance of being aware of the Pacific.

The final ingredient of a good researcher is caring about the subjects they are working on. This can be heard clearly in everything Owen wrote about the Pacific. He described the Pacific being used for submarine-based nuclear weapons and facilities used to prepare for nuclear war. He talked about the big powers using the Pacific as the “backside of the globe”, epitomised by tiny Johnston Atoll west of Hawai’i where the US military does “anything too unpopular, too dangerous and too secret to do elsewhere”.

He talked about things that were getting better: French nuclear testing on the way out; chemical weapons being destroyed. But also the region being used as a site for great power rivalry; and, under multiple pressures, the small Pacific countries being at risk of becoming “more repressive, less democratic”. He cared, and that was at the heart of being a public-interest researcher for decades.

Many of the problems he described are still occurring today. More research, more good research, on these issues and many others is crying out to be done.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

COMMENT: By Paul Claesson in Stockholm

I got to know Owen Wilkes through friends in 1980, when as a 22-year-old student I ended up in a housing collective where his ex-partner lived. He was then at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), having recently arrived from the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and was, in addition to his collaboration with Nils-Petter Gleditsch, already in full swing with his Foreign Military Presence project.

He hired me as an assistant with responsibility for Spanish and Portuguese-language source material.

During this time I got to know Søren MC and Kirsten Bruun in Copenhagen, who had recently launched the magazine Försvar — Militärkritiskt Magasin. I contributed a couple of articles and was then invited to participate in the editorial team.

A theme issue about the American bases in Greenland grew into a book, Greenland — The Pearl of the Mediterranean, which apparently caused considerable consternation in the Ministry of Greenland. The book resulted in a hearing in Christiansborg.

I was also responsible for a theme issue about the DEW (Early Warning Line) and Loran C facilities on the Faroe Islands. I was in Stockholm when SÄPO’s spy target against Owen started, and I was there the whole way.

SÄPO interrogated me a couple of times, and at one point during the trial, when I took the opportunity to hand out relevant material about Owen’s research — all publicly available — to journalists in the audience, I was visibly thrown out of the case by a couple of angry young men from FSÄK (the security service of the Swedish defence establishment).

Distorted by media
Owen and I saw each other almost every day — sometimes I stayed with him in his little cabin in Älvsjö — and together we wondered how his various activities, such as his innocent fishing trip in Åland, were distorted in the media by FSÄK and the prosecutor’s care (SÄPO had subsequently begun to show greater doubt about Owen’s guilt).

In 1984-85, after he had been expelled from Sweden, I was Owen’s house guest at his farm in Karamea, Mahoe Farm, on New Zealand’s West Coast, at the northern end of the road. He was in the process of selling it.

With his brother Jack, he had started a commercial bee farm, and together we spent an intensive summer — harvesting bush honey, pollinating apple and kiwifruit orchards and building a small harvest house for the honey collection.

In the meantime, we sold — or ate up — the farm’s remaining flock of sheep. When the farm was sold, we moved to Wellington — I was offered a room in the Quakers’ guest house, where I joined the work at Peace Movement Aotearoa’s premises on Pirie Street.

Then Prime Minister David Lange had recently let New Zealand withdraw from ANZUS, as a result of his government’s refusal to allow US Navy ships to call at port unless they declared themselves disarmed of nuclear weapons.

As a result, PMA organised a conference with the theme nuclear-free Pacific, with participants from all over the Pacific region. Together with Owen, Nicky Hager and others I contributed to the planning and execution of the conference.

Surveying US signals intelligence
Before this, Owen and Nicky had begun surveying American signals intelligence facilities in New Zealand. I took part in this, ie. with a couple of photo excursions to Tangimoana.

Owen and I kept in touch after my return to Sweden. What I remember best from his letters from this time — apart from his musings about his work as a government defence consultant — are his often comical anecdotes about his adventures in the bush, where his task was mainly to map Māori cultural remains before they were chewed up into pieces by the forest industry.

His sudden death took a toll. I got the news from his partner May Bass. I would have liked to have flown to NZ to attend the memorial services for him, but ironically they coincided with my wedding.

Owen played a very big role in my life. I admired him, and miss him all the time. More than anyone else I have known, he deserves to be remembered in writing. I was therefore very happy when I heard about the time and energy devoted to this book project. My sincere gratitude.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Reports of threats by Indonesia against “Free West Papua” activists have come to light on the anniversary of the first raising of West Papua’s emblem of independence.

“The security level is increased, they send direct threats, phone calls or SMS and in the past three days many of our West Papuan activists have [had] phone messages, propaganda messages,” says Canberra-based Free West Papua activist and musician Ronny Ato Buai Kareni.

December 1, 2022, marks 61 years since the first raising of West Papua’s symbol of independence, the Morning Star flag.

“The Morning Star flag brings a lot of emotions, it is about honouring those who have fought and died, assassinated in the name of that Morning Star flag. It is also a symbol of resistance and hope that West Papua will be free one day,” Kareni said.

In previous years, the Indonesian military and police have responded with increased violent oppression around this day, arresting and killing those they perceive as pro-independence activists in West Papua, a spokesperson from Peace Movement Aotearoa said.

The flag has been raised in solidarity with freeing West Papua from occupation by Indonesia, at events around the world.

“Seeing the young Papuans coming out today, it’s heartening,” Kareni said.

Events have been held across the Pacific, Aotearoa and Australia.

Decolonisation MOU signed
A memorandum of understanding has been signed by youth and elders fighting for decolonisation in the Pacific.

“We wanted to strengthen, renew efforts, that vision that was already established in the 1970s, 1980s,” Kareni said.

Kareni presented the Morning Star flag to Hilda Halkyard-Harawira, known by the next generation of activists as “Aunty Hilda”, at the Nuclear Connections Across Oceania conference.

“As renewed strength between young and old and to continue the legacies of the Pacific solidarity and more so in the indigenous solidarity of the national liberation struggles,” Kareni said.

Halkyard-Harawira was a co-organiser for the first Te Hui Oranga o Te Moana Nui a Kiwa in 1982.

Decades on, she is still fighting for freedom from colonisation.

“We have failed because of our mad allegiance to the Indonesian government who are illegal occupiers of West Papua,” Halkyard-Harawira said.

Ōtepoti Declaration on oppression
A call for coordinated action for campaigns that impact the human rights, sovereignty, wellbeing and prosperity of Pacific peoples across the region has been made by the Indigenous Caucus of the Nuclear Connections Across Oceania Conference.

“We remain steadfast in our continuing solidarity with our sisters and brothers in West Papua, who are surviving from and resisting against the Indonesian genocidal regime, injustice and oppression.

“We affirm the kōrero of the late Father Walter Lini, “No-one is free, until everyone is free!,” said in a joint statement released by the Indigenous Caucus.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Owen Wilkes (1940–2005) was known throughout the Pacific and across the world as an outstanding researcher on peace and disarmament.

His work:

• exposed plans to build a US Navy satellite tracking station in the Southern Alps
• identified a foreign spy base at Tangimoana (near Bulls)
• led to job offers from leading peace research institutes in Norway and Sweden — and an espionage charge for taking photographs during a cycling holiday, and
• supported local campaigns against foreign military activity in the Philippines, and for a nuclear-free Pacific.

Born in Christchurch, Owen Wilkes was an internationalist and a dedicated New Zealander — a subsistence farmer on the West Coast (where his self-built eco-home was demolished by the local council), an archaeologist, tramper and yachtsman.

In this forthcoming book, edited by historian Mark Derby and Wilkes’ former partner May Bass, experts in their own fields who knew and worked with him reflect on his achievements and his legacy. The contributors include:

Ingvar Botnen
Nils Petter Gleditsch
Nicky Hager
Di Hooper
Murray Horton
Maire Leadbeater
Robert Mann
Neville Ritchie
David Robie
Ken Ross
Peter Wills

The book, published by Raekaihau Press in association with Steele Roberts Aotearoa, has a timeline, a bibliography of Owen’s publications in several languages, and an index.

The book is being published on November 30.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

From Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau in Aotearoa New Zealand to Paris, France, and from Wellington Te Whanganui-a-Tara to Jayapura and far beyond, thousands of people across the world today raised the Morning Star flag — banned by Indonesian authorities — in simple acts of defiance and solidarity with West Papuans.

They honoured the raising of the flag for the first time 60 years ago on 1 December 1961 as a powerful symbol of the long West Papua struggle for independence.

One of the first flag-raising events today was in Wellington where Peace Movement Aotearoa and Youngsolwara Pōneke launched a virtual ceremony online with most participants displaying the banned flag.

Hosted by Victoria University Pacific studies lecturer Dr Emalani Case, a Hawai’an, many young Pacific Islanders spoke of the indigenous struggle in West Papua and their hopes for eventual independence.

“Here in Aotearoa, we have the opportunity and the privilege of being able to raise the flag without being punished for it,” Dr Case said.

Two Green MPs — Teanau Tuiono and Eugenie Sage — were also among the “flag-raisers”, declaring their solidarity with the Papuan self-determination struggle.

Asia Pacific Report editor Dr David Robie and Del Abcede were among those who spoke.

In six decades of brutal civil conflict, hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost through combat and deprivation, and Indonesia has been criticised internationally for human rights abuses, reports Stefan Armbruster of SBS News.

In Australia, the Morning Star flew in activist Ronny Kareni’s adopted hometown of Canberra.

“It brings tears of joy to me because many Papuan lives, those who have gone before me, have shed blood or spent time in prison, or died just because of raising the Morning Star flag,” Kareni, the Australian representative of the United Liberation Movement of West Papua (ULMWP), told SBS.

“Commemorating the 60th anniversary for me demonstrates hope and also the continued spirit in fighting for our right to self-determination and West Papua to be free from Indonesia’s brutal occupation.”

Indonesia’s diplomats regularly issue statements criticising the flag protests, including two years ago when the flag was raised at Sydney’s Leichhardt Town Hall, as “a symbol of separatism” that could be “misinterpreted to represent support from the Australian government”.

No response to questions about the flag’s 60th anniversary had been received by SBS News from the Indonesian embassy this year and community members and groups declined to comment.

“It’s a symbol of an aspiring independent state which would secede from the unitary Indonesian republic, so the flag itself isn’t particularly welcome within official Indonesian political discourse,” said Vedi Hadiz, an Indonesian citizen and director of the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne.

“The raising of the flag is an expression of the grievances they hold against Indonesia for the way that economic and political governance and development has taken place over the last 60 years.

“But it’s really part of the job of Indonesian officials to make a counterpoint that West Papua is a legitimate part of the unitary republic.”

The history of the Morning Star
After World War II, a wave of decolonisation swept the globe.

The Netherlands reluctantly relinquished the Dutch East Indies in 1949, which became Indonesia, but held onto Dutch New Guinea, much to the chagrin of President Sukarno, who led the independence struggle.

In 1957 Sukarno began seizing the remaining Dutch assets and expelled 40,000 Dutch citizens, many of whom were evacuated to Australia, in large part over The Netherlands’ reluctance to hand over Dutch New Guinea.

The Dutch created the New Guinea Council of predominantly elected Papuan representatives in 1961 and it declared a 10-year roadmap to independence, adopted the Morning Star flag, the national anthem — “Hai Tanahku Papua” or “Oh My Land Papua” — and a coat-of-arms for a future state to be known as “West Papua”.

The West Papua flag was inspired by the red, white and blue of the Dutch but the design can hold different meanings for the traditional landowners.

“The five-pointed star has the cultural connection to the creation story, the seven blue lines represent the seven customary land groupings,” Kareni told SBS.

The red is now often cited as a tribute to the blood spilt fighting for independence.

Attending the 1961 inauguration were Britain, France, New Zealand and Australia — represented by the president of the Senate Sir Alister McMullin in full ceremonial attire — but the United States, after initially accepting an invitation, withdrew.

Morning Star raised for first time
The Morning Star flag was raised for the first time alongside the Dutch one at a military parade in the capital Hollandia, now called Jayapura, on December 1.

On December 19, President Sukarno began ordering military incursions into what he called “West Irian”, which saw thousands of soldiers parachute or land by sea ahead of battles they overwhelmingly lost.

With long supply lines on the other side of the world and waning international support, the Dutch sensed their time was up and signed the territory over to UN control in October 1962 under the “New York Agreement”, which abolished the symbols of a future West Papuan state, including the flag.

The UN handed control to Indonesia in May 1963 on condition it prepared the territory for a referendum on self-determination.

The so-called Act Of Free Choice referendum in 1969 saw the Indonesian military round up 1025 Papuan leaders who then voted unanimously to become part of Indonesia.

The outcome was accepted by the UN General Assembly, which failed to declare if the referendum complied with the “self-determination” requirements of the New York Agreement, and Dutch New Guinea was incorporated into Indonesia.

In 1971, the Free Papua Movement (OPM) declared the “republic of West Papua” with the Morning Star as its flag, which has gone on to become a potent binding symbol for the movement.

“It’s a milestone, 60 years, and we’re still waiting to freely sing the national anthem and freely fly the Morning Star flag so it’s very significant for us, ” Kareni said.

“We still continue to fight, to claim our rights and sovereignty of the land and people.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz