Thirty five years ago today the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior was bombed in Auckland’s Waitematā Harbour by French secret agents in a blatant act of state terrorism, killing a photojournalist.

People’s campaigns have moved on since then from nuclear tests and refugees to climate justice – and future Pacific refugees.

The environmental campaign flagship was bombed on 10 July 1985 just weeks after it had been in the Marshall Islands carrying out four humanitarian voyages to rescue more than 320 Rongelap atoll villagers from the ravages of US nuclear tests and take them to a new home, Mejato island on Kwajalein atoll.

READ MORE: Eyes of Fire – Thirty Years On
LISTEN: David Robie reflects on the Rainbow Warrior on RNZ’s Crimes NZ programme

They were nuclear refugees seeking justice, relief and a healthy life far from the dangerous legacy left from 105 tests on Bikini and nearby atolls.

Ironically, the bombing in Auckland and mounting Pacific opposition led to a massive wave of New Zealand and Pacific anti-nuclear solidarity and ultimately to the halt of French nuclear testing at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls in 1996 after 193 blasts.

The bombed ship’s pioneering environmental work has since been carried on by Rainbow Warrior II and the state-of-the-art eco campaign ship Rainbow Warrior III.

Today the focus is on climate refugees, the lack of adequate health compensation for the Polynesians who suffered radiation and failure to provide proper clean-up of the French nuclear testing zones that are still off-limits after almost a quarter century. Tests were carried out by balloon, derrick, in the lagoon and in a series of underground shafts which have threatened the stability of the 60 km long atoll, leaving it fractured “like Swiss cheese”.

Landmark ruling
In January this year, in a landmark United Nations ruling, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, governments have been told not to return people to countries where their lives might be threatened by climate change.

Climate action activists have greeted this ruling as a potential game changer for both climate refugees, or migrants, and for advocates for global climate action.

The UN Human Rights Committee ruled in the covenant that “without robust national and international efforts, the effects of climate change in receiving states may expose individuals to violations of their rights”.

The ruling applied to a humble New Zealand vegetable farm foreman, Ioane Teitiota, from the island nation of Kiribati, who had become a poster boy for climate refugee legal advocates even though he had little understanding of this concept.

Five years earlier, his lawyers had applied for protection for him in New Zealand after presenting a legal argument that he and his family’s lives were at risk from the impact of climate change and rising Pacific Ocean level in Kiribati as one of the “frontline states” facing global warming.

Although Teitiota and his lawyers lost the case because the threat to Kiribati was not deemed to be an imminent risk, the ruling opened the door to recognition of the existence of climate refugees and the possibility of legal refugee protection.

Climate change will force tens of millions of people to leave their homes in the next decade, according to a report by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF). And this would include many on low-lying atolls in the South Pacific.

‘Humanitarian visa’
In October 2017, New Zealand’s Climate Minister James Shaw announced that the incoming government was planning an “experimental humanitarian visa” category for Pacific Islanders forced to leave their homes. Partially inspired by the Teitiota case, it was envisaged that up to 100 people a year might settle in New Zealand under this scheme.

However, this humanitarian plan was quietly shelved because Pacific Islanders generally do not want to leave their homes. They prefer support for adaptation and mitigation for their continuing lives on ancestral land with refugee status as merely a last resort.

The Rainbow Warrior had visited Kiribati and Vanuatu on the voyage to New Zealand after the Marshall Islands mission. Crew members saw at first hand some of the climate pressures already apparent back then.

Cancer sufferers seeking nuclear compensation from the French government under the controversial Morin law received a boost last month when a man who had developed bladder cancer as a result of the nuclear tests was awarded almost US$180,000 by the administrative court.

This news was welcomed by both health advocates and activists.

According to the local news service Tahiti-Infos,  an earlier application for compensation had been turned down by the authority dealing with the case.

The compensation law has been tightened up again after being earlier relaxed with most claims being rejected between 2010 and 2017.

Uproar in Tahiti
In May, there was an uproar in Tahiti when the French National Assembly attempted to include a clause about compensation over nuclear weapons testing into generic covid-19 legislation while the French Polynesian representatives were absent from the chamber because of the pandemic travel bans.

Tahiti’s Moetai Brotherson, one of the two French Polynesian representatives, described this move as a “scandal” and two nuclear test veteran advocacy groups, Moruroa e Tatou and Association 193, were also angry, reports RNZ Pacific.

During the three decades of French tests, the early atmospheric explosions had dusted atolls and islets with radioactive fallout.

Brotherson expressed disappointment that the French state had demonstrated yet again that it “detested” the Tahitian people. Moruroa e Tatou’s Hiro Tefaarere said he was “outraged” but not surprised because all French presidents from de Gaulle to Macron “couldn’t care less” about Polynesians.

During 2019, the French Polynesian social security agency CPS reported that it had spent US$770 million on health care costs for radiation-induced illnesses. The CPS, responsible for medical expenses and pension payments, has struggled with its budgets and wants France to take responsibility for compensation.

However, French authorities do not accept liability for test-related illnesses, claiming the nuclear blasts were “clean” unlike the earlier US and British tests in the Pacific.

The nuclear tests have rarely been an issue outside French Polynesia and independent Pacific nations. But some consciences are occasionally pricked.

A French Watergate?
Five years ago, the unmasked French bomber who sank the Rainbow Warrior in 1985 made some revealing comments during his interviews with the investigative website Mediapart and TVNZ’s Sunday programme, none more telling than that “the first bomb was too powerful, it should have ended as a Watergate” for French President François Mitterrand.

Mitterrand stayed in office for 14 years – a decade after the bombing and before he finally stepped down when his second presidential term ended in May 1995, the year before nuclear tests ended.

The bomber, retired colonel Jean-Luc Kister, added that had Operation Satanique – the sabotage plot – involved the United States, “more heads would have rolled”.

However, while the “innocent death” of Portuguese-born Dutch photographer Fernando Pereira has clearly played on his conscience for all these years, Kister’s sincere apology wasn’t without a hint of trying to rewrite history.

The claim that the secret sabotage operation never meant to kill anybody is unconvincing for anybody on board the Rainbow Warrior on that tragic night when New Zealand lost its political innocence and the crew lost a dear friend.

In 2005, two decades after the bombing and nine years after Mitterrand’s death, Le Monde published a leaked document revealing that the late president had personally approved the sinking of the ship.

The newspaper obtained a handwritten account of the operation, written in 1986 by Pierre Lacoste, who was sacked as head of the secret services.

The Democracy Now! report – Rainbow Warrior and President François Mitterrand. Video: Democracy Now!

‘Neutralise’ the Warrior
He had testified that he had asked President Mitterrand for permission to “neutralise” the Rainbow Warrior at a meeting two months before the attack and would never have gone ahead without the president’s authorisation. 

The so-called nuclear “war” in the Pacific dates back to the US bombing of Hiroshima and

Nagasaki in 1945. The bombing was followed by  atmospheric nuclear testing by the United States in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958, arguably the “dirtiest” nuclear testing.

The first so-called nuclear refugees in the Pacific were the Bikini atoll islanders who were relocated into “exile” for the first US weapons tests in 1946.

Then came the British tests at Christmas Island (now Kiribati) and in the Australian outback; the start of the French testing at Moruroa in 1966; more US tests at Johnston Atoll in the early 1960s; flight testing of ICBMs, anti-satellite weapons; and more recently “Star Wars” technology at the Kwajalein Missile Range in the Marshall Islands.

As the late Steve Sawyer, Greenpeace campaign coordinator on board the Rainbow Warrior and whose birthday was being celebrated on board the night of the bombing, noted, “the displacement of local populations and adverse health effects as a result of these programmes has not been without opposition.

“But that opposition has been so scattered and unorganised until recently that it has been little felt in Washington and Paris.”

And the Rainbow Warrior Pacific voyage was planned to make a global difference. It did, but one that shook the world and ended in tragedy.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Iran attracts an onslaught of negative media in New Zealand and Western media. But is it fair or deserved? David Robie has spent several weeks travelling in the country on sabbatical and finds the media negativity far from the reality of the “most friendly” country he has ever visited in the first of a three-part series.

The headlines were chilling as we flew into Turkey and then Iran. “All out war”, trumpeted The New Zealand Herald, as being an imminent response to last month’s surprise drone attack knocking out almost 50 percent of Saudi Arabia’s oil production, blaming the attack on the Islamic Republic without convincing evidence.

President Donald Trump warned that the US was “locked and loaded” if Iran was found to be behind the attacks, and then later apparently backed off and relied on even heavier sanctions.

The next day the Herald belatedly ran the other side of the story, quoting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s response denying the allegations and warning that Iran would defend itself in the case of a US-Saudi attack while offering the “hand of friendship and brotherhood” for overseeing security in the Persian Gulf.

WATCH: Rouhani – US sanctions have failed

President Hassan Rouhani says US sanctions have failed to bring Iran’s economy to its knees. Al Jazeera video

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, in a press conference on Monday, has said US sanctions have failed to bring Iran’s economy to its knees.

Houthi forces in neighbouring Yemen, invaded by a Saudi-led coalition in 2015 that led to widely condemned four-year civil war, claimed to have carried out the drone and rocket attack on the two oil installations at Abaiq and Khurais.

Given the rising geopolitical tensions, as I was about to visit the country for several weeks as a visitor on sabbatical, I was keen to see the realities on the ground in Iran behind the sabre-rattling.

Hadn’t we seen this sort of situation before, attempts at regime change by Washington on the flimsiest of evidence? The unjustified invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example, based on the fictitious claims of Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. And look at the chaos and destruction of a nation that resulted from that overwhelming military attack.

Vietnam pretext
And then there was the 1964 manufactured Bay of Tonkin incident that was used as a pretext for US escalation of the war on North Vietnam. What a disaster with the eventual humiliating airlift withdrawal of US combat troops in 1975.

Just a few weeks before the Saudi oil installations attack, Al Jazeera UpFront interviewer and columnist Mehdi Hasan wrote in The Intercept in response to a Washington assessment blaming Iran for an earlier attack on two Saudi oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz:

“Why would you trust the word of a single official on such a sensitive and contentious issue? And why, oh why, would you rely on the testimony of a member of the Trump administration, known globally, of course, for its stringent and unbending adherence to the truth?”

Hasan added this qualification:

“If you’re going to trust the word of a single anonymous official, in this administration of fanatical hawks and shameless dissemblers, why not trust this particular official who was quoted in The New York Times?

One American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential internal planning, said the new intelligence of an increased Iranian threat was “small stuff” and did not merit the military planning being driven by Mr Bolton [then still National Security Adviser before being sacked by Trump]. The official also said the ultimate goal of the year-long economic sanctions campaign by the Trump administration was to draw Iran into an armed conflict with the United States.

Hasan added a rather stinging rebuke about the performance of Western journalists generally.

Lessons for journalists

“Plenty of journalists say they want to learn the lessons of Iraq. But the sad reality is that many of my colleagues in the media are, wittingly or unwittingly, becoming complicit in this administration’s cynical and dangerous attempt ‘to draw Iran into an armed conflict with the United States’.”

Confronted with the tensions and about to arrive in Iran for my first visit – and hopefully not last to this fascinating, friendly and vibrant country with a proud history of ancient civilisations – I consulted our MFAT’s “Travel Safe” website.

Sadly, our government’s advice to travellers is just as flawed as media reports.

Under a large red exclamation icon, the site warns “do not travel within 100km of the border with Afghanistan, within 10km of the Iraqi border or east of the line running from Bam to Jask close to the Pakistan border due to the threat of terrorism and violent crime”.

I won’t quibble about the Iraqi or Pakistan borders – as I did not personally visit those areas, but I suspect the warning is exaggerated, especially when you consider that some two million pilgrims have just been crossing the border into Iraq peacefully, as usual, for the annual Arba’een pilgrimage to Karbala.

However, the Afghan border warning is way off the mark. I have just come back from a week-long visit to Mashhad, Iran’s second city – a beautiful and peaceful metropolis that hosts the world’s third-largest mosque, the Haram-e Razavi shrine. This is only a three-hour drive from the border.

For the next section, “Exercise increased caution”, the NZ government advisory warns: “Elsewhere in Iran exercise increased caution due to the potential for civil unrest and the regional threat of terrorism”.

Laughable advisory
Frankly, this is laughable when you consider what New Zealand suffered on March 15 with a terrorist gunman killing a total of 51 peaceful worshippers at two Christchurch mosques being a far worse attack that either of the Iranian incidents mentioned on Travel Safe – in Ahvaz on 22 September 2018 and the capital Tehran on 7 June 2017.

This does not mean no caution is needed given that the repressive rule under the Shah deposed in 1979 has been continued by the revolutionary regime. But for travellers like us, Iran is an astoundingly friendly country that welcomes tourists with genuine enthusiasm and with few overt signs of the restrictions that rile many (such as the hijab rules that have led to widespread White Wednesday protests and agitation over the tragic death of the so-called “Blue Girl” football stadium protester that gained an interim victory last week).

On September 2, 29-year-old Sahar Khodayari, set herself on fire in front of the Tehran revolutionary courthouse after learning she could face a prison sentence for up to two years following her protest attempt to enter the capital’s Azadi Stadium dressed as a boy.

She was dubbed the Blue Girl because this was the colour of her favourite team, Esteghial FC.

Although attendance by women at football matches has been banned since 1981, sometimes exceptions have been made for matches played by the national Iranian team and some women have posed as men to attend.

After Khodayari’s tragic self-immolation, a ban on women at Azadi Stadium was lifted, but it is unclear whether this is permanent or applies elsewhere in the country.

The White Wednesdays campaign was launched by US-based Iranian journalist Masih Alinejad to oppose compulsory hijab wearing.

No hijab photos
The campaign persuades women to post photos or videos of themselves without headscarves and the journalist publishes them on her social media sites. News reports have cited authorities as saying protesters face up to 10 years, but scores of women have protested anyway.

In recent weeks, the detention of two Australian social media “influencers” for allegedly taking photographs with a drone without a permit – and now set free – and the arrest of a British-Iranian social anthropologist without charge have also contributed to negative headlines. (Another dual citizen academic has been detained since 2016).

No Family Visits or Lawyer Allowed for Detained Anthropologist Kameel Ahmady Two Weeks Into Detention

“We reject these authoritarian rules and I would say 90 percent of Iranians don’t accept them. But we Iranians have become very good at pretending, we are very adaptable people,” says an Esfahan manufacturer, who spent time in New Zealand as a student.

Another Iranian, from Mashhad, who also studied in New Zealand, says, “Our future has been destroyed. For young people like us, we have limited choices.”

However, the country has far more nuanced realities than Western media generally give credit. Back to columnist Mehdi Hasan – what is his advice for journalists in order to provide a more balanced account of the country?

He has four suggestions: “stop the stenography”; get the facts straight; context, context, context; and get better sources.

Under his stenography heading, he condemns “passing along the claims of US officials to readers of viewers, without checking whether they are true or not”.

Getting facts right
Getting facts right – “Iran does not have nuclear weapons. Iran does not have a nuclear weapons programme. Iran has complied with the terms of the nuclear deal.”

It is the US that scuttled the nuclear deal – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – last year while Europe and the UN were satisfied it was working. Trump imposed the punitive sanctions that have rightly been branded by both Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif as “economic terrorism”, especially Washington’s efforts to cut off Iranian revenue from the sale of its oil (a policy currently being defiantly thwarted by China).

Clearly this blunt “maximum pressure” attempt at “regime change” has failed and now the US policy has been exposed as “maximum deceit”, according to the Iranian leadership.

Hasan says journalists ought to provide context by reporting more historical background to the issues. For example, how often do stories report that the US “Eisenhower administration toppled the democratically elected government of Iranian Prime Minister Dr Mohammad Mossadegh in a CIA coup in 1953?” He had nationalised the British-owned Anglo-Iranian oil company (later rebranded as British Petroleum).

“Or that the Carter administration offered safe haven to the repressive dictator, the Shah of Iran, after he fled from the Iranian Revolution in 1979?”

And the Reagan administration encouraged Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to launch a surprise invasion of Iran in 1981, a bitter protracted war that lasted eight years with unprepared Iranian conscripts – young and old – suffering most of the estimated one million casualties.

Hasan also urges the use of better sources. Do not simply rely on administration officials, whether in Washington or Wellington. Look to a wider range of sceptical voices and analysts. And Al Jazeera, Turkey’s TRT News and Iran’s Press TV channels are good for more balanced and background perspectives.

Among academics I have talked to, media management social scientist Professor Reza Ebrahimzadeh of the Islamic Azad University at Esfahan, argues that foreign news organisations need to do a far better job in providing “context and history” about Iran to promote global understanding.

More journalists from New Zealand need to go to Iran to see for themselves.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

The Pacific Media Centre’s Del Abcede joined the Ihumātao “protectors” protest at the weekend to soak up the atmosphere of guardianship over the future of the sacred indigenous Māori site.

Fletcher Building plans to build 480 homes on the site but work has been suspended by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern while talks continue between various stakeholders.

The SOUL (Save Our Unique Landscape) protectors group says the land has historical, cultural and archaeological significance and should be left an open space or returned to mana whenua.

The block of land was confiscated in 1863 by British colonial authorities, acquired by the Crown and sold to the Wallace family. In 2016, the 32ha block was bought by the Fletcher group for housing development.

Here is a portfolio of Del’s images.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Rahul Bhattarai

An allegedly “enslaved” Indonesian fisherman on board Yu Shun 88, a Taiwanese flagged tuna longliner, has now been repatriated from Fiji to his homeland, says an Auckland lawyer.

Barrister and solicitor Karen Harding alleged in a social media video message addressed to the skipper that the fishing boat was holding her client against his will in “abject” working conditions.

But with the help of an Indonesian government representative and a charity group known as Pacific Dialogue, the fisherman was repatriated to Indonesia last weekend.

READ MORE: From traffic law to human rights – how an Auckland woman is fighting for justice for 30 fishermen

Harding, a lawyer with a high profile in acting on drink and driving cases who has branched into human rights lawsuits, said the unnamed fisherman’s bed was infested with fleas, food was spoiled, and there was no fresh soap or water for showers.

The fishermen on the boat, which carries up to 17 people, were also forced to work for 18-20 hours a day, she claimed.

-Partners-

Harding said the captain had taken the passport, the seaman’s book and withheld pay as a security bond.

The fisherman wanted to go home due to “horrible working conditions” and many injuries.

A “flea-infested bed” on board the Yu Shun 88. Image: Lawyers

Wages withheld
One fisherman was so injured, he was “not even able to hold a chop stick,” Harding said.

“You are holding him against his will and your company is not paying him his wages and holding the wages back as security,” she alleged in the video message.

Her client got a job to work on a Taiwanese fishing vessel in Suva and “was promised, he was going to get US$450 (NZ$672) in wages and commission of US$400 (NZ$589) per month per docking,” Harding said.

Not paying them and holding wages as security was “creating forced labour”, Harding said.

“I liaised with the Indonesian government on Sunday … and liaised with the charity group known as Pacific Dialogue,” and the latter reported the matter to the embassy, Harding said.

The Indonesian government had been helpful in a timely dealing with this matter.

The Indonesian government had arranged for the representative of the Indonesian government to go to the agent’s office on the Suva wharf,” Harding said.

Seeking wages
Now that the fisherman was home, the problem was getting his wages for the time he had worked on the ship.

Out of NZ$1261 allegedly owed to him, he had only received $141 for four months of work. His contract had said that “if he didn’t complete the contract they weren’t going to pay his wages,” said Harding.

There are other fishermen on board the same ship, but because Harding was only dealing with one fisherman, the status of the others is unknown.

The same fisherman had also allegedly been subject to similar harsh conditions in New Zealand waters on board a Korean vessel.

The fisherman still had not been paid by the Oyang 77, for the period of 2009 January 22 to 2010 December 6.

“He effectively only got paid only one hour a day at the NZ minimum pay rate,” Harding said.

“And he worked 18 hours a day on average.”

No comment was available from the company’s involved.

The Yu Shun 88 is now headed towards Solomon Islands and is expected to spend another 12 months at sea with other fishermen on board.

The infected hand of one of the fishermen on board Yu Shun 88. Image: Lawyers

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The content of the Boe Declaration, signed at the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru earlier this month, is not widely known. However, a statement from New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern suggests that it declares climate change as a security issue.

“The Boe Declaration acknowledges additional collective actions are required to address new and non-traditional challenges. Modern-day regional security challenges include climate change,” she said in a statement.

Both the Leaders Communique and the declaration itself affirm the fact that climate change is a real issue. However, it is discussion of gender in light of that is lacking.

READ MORE: Nauru 2018 and the new Boe on the block

According to a report by Oxfam, men survived women 3 to 1 in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) suggests that this was because women were trapped in their homes at the time of the disaster “while men were out in the open”.

The agency also suggest that a cultural or religious custom can restrict a woman’s ability to survive a natural disaster.

“. . . the clothes they wear and/or their responsibilities in caring for children could hamper their mobility in times of emergency,” a UNDP report says.

Caregivers and providers
Figures from the United Nations show that 80 percent of those displaced by climate change were women. This, they argue, is caused primarily by their roles as caregivers and providers of food.

London School of Economics research indicates that women and girls are definitively more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than their male counterparts.

In societies where women are considered to be lower on the metaphorical food chain, “natural disasters will kill . . . more women than men,” the report says.

The two researchers could find no biological reason why women would be at more risk than men.

Based on this research, and other research like it, many public figures have called for attention to be paid to the issue.

“More extreme weather events. . . will all result in less food. Less food will mean that women and children get less,” dystopian author Margaret Atwood told a London conference in June.

The author of books like The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake said that climate change “. . . will also mean social unrest, which can lead to wars and civil wars . . . Women do badly in wars”.

Primarily burdened
When asked about the issue at an event at Georgetown University in February, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that “. . . women. . . will be . . . primarily burdened with the problems of climate change”.

Earlier this month, former NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark told a crowd of about 200 people at the National Council of Women (NCW) conference that the world was close to missing the opportunity to tend to the issue of climate change and women were most likely to be affected by it.

“Everything we know tells us that women are the most vulnerable in this,” she said. “If you look at the natural disasters caused by weather. . . more women die”.

According to Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine, President of the Marshall Islands, women are more affected by climate change than their male counterparts but are also “less likely to be empowered to cope”.

“Women aren’t making enough of the decisions, and the decisions aren’t yet doing enough for women,” she wrote in The Guardian.

The UNDP argues it is because of a woman’s place in the household that she is in prime position to affect change when it comes to this issue.

“. . . knowledge and capabilities [regarding reproduction, household and community roles] can and should be deployed for/in climate change mitigation, disaster relief and adaptation strategies,” the report says..

Feminist solution
“A feminist solution” is what former Irish President and UN Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson argued for in June.

She explained that “feminism doesn’t mean excluding men, it’s about being more inclusive of women and – in this case – acknowledging the role they can play in tackling climate change”.

She’s not the only, nor the first, to make such a suggestion.

A whole feminist environmental movement, known as ecofeminism, has sprung up over the decades since the 1970s.

At its most basic level, ecofeminism is exactly what it sounds like: It argues that there is a relationship between environmental damage – such as that done by climate change – and the oppression of women and their rights.

For example, in her 2014 book This Changes Everything, journalist Naomi Klein argues that it is hypocritical that the self-same lawmakers who claim to be “pro-life” are also the ones who push for whole industries surrounding drilling, fracking and mining to not only survive but thrive.

Business confidence
“If the Earth is indeed our mother, then far from the bountiful goddess of mythology, she is a mother facing many great fertility challenges,” she writes.

In New Zealand, leader of the opposition National Party Simon Bridges, who is opposed to the idea of removing abortion from the Crimes Act, is also vehemently opposed to the idea of stopping oil and gas exploration in the Taranaki region.

His concern is that “It will have an effect on business confidence,” he said back in April.

The truth of climate change, as with most global issues, is that there can be no one-size fits all solution.

For some, like Helen Clark, it requires long-term mass movements. For others, it requires being invited to the conversation.

Time will tell as to which one wins out.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

With the date for this year’s second Fiji general election since the 2006 coup yet to be announced, one of the questions is will there be a free media for the campaign? Sri Krishnamurthi in Suva talks to some media commentators who are not optimistic.

The frenzy of the forthcoming elections is just starting to hit Fiji, even though the date has yet to be announced, but the elephant in the room is whether the media is going to be free of government interference.

“No, definitely not. The combination of threats [such as those faced by Hank Art – who as publisher of The Fiji Times recently beat sedition charges] and self-censorship have become
severe,” says New Zealand journalist Michael Field, a veteran of 30 years reporting on the Pacific.

“I believe the Fiji media is fearful of the [Voreqe] Bainimarama government and its ability to hit at media in ways that are expensive and worrying. This ranges from the simple banning of government ads in The Fiji Times to the various sedition issues.

READ MORE: Coups, globalisation and Fiji’s reset structures of ‘democracy’

“Being free and independent is too expensive for what are small companies compared with the size of the state.”

Dr Shailendra Singh, coordinator of journalism at the University of the South Pacific, questions whether Fiji is ready for a free media.

“Whether Western notions of free, unrestrained media are suitable for a developing, fragile, ethnically-tense country is a moot point,” he says.

“Media have been known to inflame situations, just as governments have been known to use stability and security as pretexts to curtail media scrutiny and criticism. Finding the right balance can be elusive,“ Dr Singh says.

‘Power of the pen’
When Sitiveni Rabuka staged the first two coups in 1987, he admittedly was unaware of the “power of the pen”.

“Personally, I had nothing to hide from the media” he said on reflection in 2005 about his coups.

However, subsequent governments did not see the media as a poodle to be toyed with; instead the perception of the industry was that of a rottweiler itching to bite.

“I think it is more likely that the media regulations arose from those who saw the influence of the media, particularly in the [Mahendra] Chaudhry government [overthrown in the third coup in 2000] – and earlier in the lively free-ranging days when the media really was free and independent,” says Field, who was banned from Fiji in 2007.

“The Bainimarama government is clever enough to realise that they might not last with a free media.”

Fiji has flirted with having both a regulated media and self-censorship since the first of its four coups in 1987.

“True. But the government baulked, fearful of the public reaction and international fallout,” says Dr Singh.

‘Media always fragile’
“What that tells us is that media freedom in Fiji has always been fragile. It was only a matter of time.

“Media in Fiji are free to report as they see fit but serious mistakes are punishable by various existing laws such as defamation and contempt which are sufficient, so journalists are quite cautious.

“No one wants to be dragged through the courts like in the recent Fiji Times sedition case. The three-year lawsuit would have been financially, physically, psychologically draining. The Fiji Times escaped by the skin of its teeth.

“Free media is in the beholder’s eyes in some respects. Government feels media is free enough. Media, on the other hand, feel caged. Finding the right balance can be elusive.”

Ricardo Morris, a former journalist and current affairs magazine editor in Fiji, explains the impact of the Media Industry Development Decree (MIDD) which was imposed in 2010 and five years later became law.

“The decree became an act in 2015. The Media Authority (MIDA) doesn’t have to do much anymore because [chairman – Ashwin] Raj simply has to make comment or criticise a media company for some perceived slight and everyone retreats,” says Morris.

Morris researched and authored a 2017 report on self-censorship in Fiji on a Reuters Foundation scholarship.

“There is talk regionally and internationally about how the media Act is hanging over the media’s head. However, Raj usually says, ‘we have never brought prosecution against a media company under the media decree’ and he is right.

‘Always that danger’
“But there is always that danger.

“They’ll usually issue statements, and in the past there has been public shaming, so now you don’t really need to bring cases against the media because they are too afraid to do something that might jeopardise their position or if they do get charged they will get charged under some other criminal law as in the case of The Fiji Times now – they are charged under the Crimes Act, a case that has now gone to appeal. That’s a distinction.”

Dr Singh says it is for that reason he does not see a relaxation of the media laws.

“The media situation is not going to change – that I can say with some confidence. The laws are going to remain the same for some time yet.

“Government, which has the power to change the legislation, has not said anything. One assumes the government is happy with the way things are, so why change? If this government is returned with a strong mandate, it may feel confident enough to change the laws.

“Or it may see a stronger mandate as a vindication of its media law. The opposition National Federation Party (NFP) has said it will abolish the decree if it forms government. “

Which provisions of MIDD do those involved find most objectionable and would like to see removed?

‘Protect their own backs’
“Fines and jail terms against reporters/journalists were removed but this is meaningless unless the same is done for publishers/editors, obviously because the latter have control over journalists and will censor them to protect their own backs.

“Clear definition of what constitutes inciting communal antagonism,” says Dr Singh.

As Field says, it is simple case of economies of scale when it come to the media.

“This ranges from the simple banning of government ads in The Fiji Times, to the various sedition issues. Being free and independent is too expensive for what are small companies compared with the size of the state,” he says.

Hence the media has become a cowered and beaten animal in Fiji.

“It has become tame and fearful, it is under the control of the government and its handlers. Many journalists in Fiji, with an eye to junkets and scholarships, prefer to follow the Information Ministry line and just write up press statements,” says Field.

“I don’t think there has been a true debate in Fiji over what a free media should be … the debate has always been defined by the men with the guns.”

Sedition charges
Sedition charges were filed against The Fiji Times, three of its executives, and one opinion columnist. The columnist (Josaia Waqabaca) accused Muslims of historic crimes including invading foreign lands, rape, and murder.

“Sedition is not a crime in most countries, it’s called free speech. The content of the letter with its anti-Muslim sentiment is widely held by many. By suppressing it you do not make it go away,” says Field.

“I believe the final verdict was reached because the open absurdity of the charge, and its contents, could not be sustained, and even the imported judge did not want to be seen signing on to it.”

As Morris puts it: “We haven’t really heard the debate about the sedition law, a lot of the countries with similar histories have abandoned the sedition law because there is a fine line between freedom of expression and sedition.

“But now because of The Fiji Times, my perception is the general public err on the side of caution and will not say anything that will be deemed seditious.”

MIDD sits above the media like an axe waiting to fall, and the threat of it falling is why the media cannot expect freedom in the 2018 general elections or anytime soon.

Sri Krishnamurthi is a journalist and Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies at Auckland University of Technology student contributing to the Pacific Media Centre’s Asia Pacific Report.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Participants at the Pacific Media Centre’s 10th anniversary celebration last Thursday held a silent vigil calling for justice for the victims of the 2009 Ampatuan massacre and in protest against the spate of extrajudicial killings in the Philippines.

Calling for “Justice Now!”, “Never again to martial law” and “Stop the killings”, the participants made the emphatic statement at the end of a compelling address by Malou Mangahas, executive director of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), during the “Journalism Under Duress” seminar.

Associate Professor (Pasifika) Laumanuvao Winnie Laban of Victoria University, who launched the centre as a cabinet minister a decade ago, praised the progress, and AUT’s School of Communication Studies head Professor Berrin Yanıkkaya launched a new photojournalism book.

Images by Del Abcede and Kendall Hutt of the Pacific Media Centre

PMC turns 10 in images

1. A silent but visual vigil for the victims of the 2009 Ampatuan massacre and in protest against the extrajudicial killings in the Philippines. Image: Venus Abcede/PMC

2. Associate Professor Laumanuvao Winnie Laban – then, in 2007, and now. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

3. RNZ International’s Johnny Blades checks out the PMC exhibition. Image: Kendall Hutt/PMC

4. Exhibition creator Del Abcede with the photo display. Image: Venus Abcede/PMC

5. Del Abcede with her favourite disoplay photo – two young Palestinian women. Image: Kendall Hutt/PMC

6. The PMC photographic display. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

7. Venus Abcede with the PMC photographic display. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

8. Gloria Hooker with the Kunda Dixit photo in the display. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

9. The Pacific Forum “class” of 2011 with PMW’s Kendall Hutt. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

10. Part of the crowd at the PMC photographic display. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

11. Laumanuavao Winnie Laban at the Pacific Media Centre. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

12. Laumanuvao Winnie Laban and PMC director Professor David Robie. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

13. MC Alistar Kata (left) and Laumanuvao Winnie Laban. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

14. Annie and Dr Philip Cass and Professor Berrin Yanıkkaya speaking. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

15. Professors Berrin Yanıkkaya and David Robie launching the books. Image: Kendall Hutt/PMC

16. Professor Berrin Yanıkkaya (centre) with Dr Frances Nelson, Associate Dean Dr Rosser Johnson and journalism curriculum leader Louise Matthews. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

17. Lead co-editor of Conflict, Custom & Conscience Jim Marbrook speaking about the new book. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

18. Dr Rosser Johnson, A/Professor Camille Nakhid (PMC advisory board chair) and Laumanuvao Winnie Laban. Image: Kendall Hutt/PMC

19. Part of the crowd at the book launch. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

20. Professor Barry King with PMW’s Kendall Hutt. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

21. Fiji media personality Bharat Jamnadas. Image: Kendall Hutt/PMC

22. Jim Marbrook and Scott Creighton. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

23. Mata Lauano and MC Alistar Kata. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

24. Julie Marbrook and Paul Janman. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

25. Fuimaono Tuiasau, Tagaloatele Professor Peggy Fairbairn-Dunlop and Gloria Hooker. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

26. MC Alistar Kata and Dr Frances Nelson. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

27. MC Alistar Kata and Janet Tupou. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

28. Trevor Darville and Margaret Mills. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

29. Tuwhera’s Donna Coventry Luqman and Luqman Hayes. Image: Del Abcede/PMC

30. Sasya Wreksonon introducing her video Pacific Media Centre 10 years On. Image: Kendall Hutt/PMC

31. Philippine Center for Investigative Journalismspeaking at the “Journalism Under Duress” seminar. Image: Kendall Hutt/PMCr I

32. RNZI’s Johnny Blades speaking at the “Journalism Under Duress” seminar. Image: Kendall Hutt/PMC

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz