Politicians are under fire overseas. But New Zealand should take note too.

The US Justice Department’s release of more than three million Epstein files (including 180,000 images and 2000 videos) has blown the doors off the most protected social network of the late 20th century.

What these documents reveal is not just a catalogue of one man’s depravity. It is, as Helen Rumbelow wrote in The Times, like “taking the back off the world clock”, exposing how power actually works at the top of the Western world.

And the implications reach all the way to New Zealand.

New Zealand media has done useful work tracking the Kiwi names that appear in the files.

Paula Penfold at Stuff searched more than a thousand New Zealand references. Joel MacManus at The Spinoff, Ben Tomsett and Ethan Manera at The New Zealand Herald, and Steve Braunias at Newsroom have reported on the local angles — Peter Thiel’s investment relationship with Epstein, the New Zealand Defence Force couple who managed Epstein’s properties, Auckland academic Brian Boyd, physicist Lawrence Krauss and his pursuit of Epstein money for an Otago University role.

These stories matter. But the fixation on which Kiwis appear in the files misses the real story. The Epstein scandal is not fundamentally about which individuals had dinner with a monster. It is about what kind of political systems allow monsters to operate at the centre of global power for decades without consequence.

On that score, New Zealand should be paying very close attention, because our systems are weaker than those now failing spectacularly in countries around us.

The Mandelson masterclass
The most instructive case study is not American but British. The fall of Peter Mandelson (the architect of New Labour, the self-described “Prince of Darkness”) is a textbook case of how politics and money have gone rotten in liberal democracies.

The Epstein files revealed that Mandelson, while serving as “Deputy PM” to Gordon Brown, and in the position of Business Secretary, forwarded highly sensitive government tax plans to Jeffrey Epstein.

He told Epstein he was “trying hard to amend” a planned tax on bankers’ bonuses and suggested that JPMorgan’s CEO should “mildly threaten” the Chancellor to water down the policy. He gave Epstein advance notice of a €500 billion EU bailout before public announcement.

On Christmas Day, he wrote to a convicted paedophile: “I do not want to live by salary alone”.

So, a sitting Cabinet minister was leaking government intelligence to a convicted sex offender, lobbying against his own government’s financial regulation on behalf of that offender’s banking contacts, and angling for post-politics employment — all at the same time.

Within weeks of leaving office, his lobbying firm Global Counsel was chasing work with the Russian state investment fund and the state-owned China International Capital Corporation.

The Starmer government is bleeding credibility. Police opened a criminal investigation, Mandelson’s properties were searched, and yesterday Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney resigned, saying the appointment decision “has damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself”.

The Economist magazine has called it “Britain’s worst political scandal of this century”. UK Labour now trails Reform UK in the polls.

As former Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote in The Guardian last Friday, in a remarkable act of public contrition: “I greatly regret this appointment . . .  He seems to have used market-sensitive inside information to betray the principles in which he said he believed”.

Brown’s piece was not merely an apology. It was a manifesto for integrity reform. Brown called for an independent anti-corruption commission with statutory powers, a fully accountable vetting system for major political appointments, mandatory parliamentary hearings for senior ambassadors and ministers, a five-year cooling-off period for former ministers entering lobbying, and the creation of corruption as a new statutory offence.

Brown argued for nothing less than a “century-defining rebalancing of power and accountability”, and he warned that without fundamental change, the revelations would be “acid in our democracy, corroding trust still further”.

Heather Stewart, writing in The Guardian, drew out the structural lesson: Mandelson’s personal disgrace is “deep and unique, and may yet bring down a prime minister — but by laying bare the dark allure of the filthy rich, it also underlines the need for tougher constraints on money in politics”.

Stewart documented how Epstein’s efforts to influence government policy — working to water down Alistair Darling’s bonus tax at a time when the banks had crashed the economy — “underline the powerful forces with which politicians are faced”.

She noted that Transparency International warned last summer: “We stand at the beginning of a new and dangerous era, where big money dominates in a way that has corroded US politics across the Atlantic”. The campaign group Spotlight on Corruption warned the current system is “full of major loopholes and gaps”.

The real takeaway is this: when it comes to money and politics, whether post-parliamentary employment, lobbying, or party funding, it is unwise to take honesty and decency as a given. As Stewart concluded: “It is not too late to pull up the drawbridge . . .  by introducing stringent new rules to protect British democracy from the malign influence of powerful companies, and dodgy billionaires”.

The global rot at the top
What is striking is the convergence. Left, right, and libertarian commentators from across the ideological spectrum are reaching the same conclusion: the Epstein network was not an aberration. It was a symptom of what happens when wealth, power, and access operate without transparency or accountability.

As Josie Pagani observed in The Post, “there appears to be a high degree of crossover between the sort of people who attend World Economic Forum jamborees at Davos, and the sort of people who hung out with Jeffrey Epstein”. The Economist noted the files read “like a ‘Who’s Who’ which has gathered only a thin layer of dust”.

These are not fringe figures being exposed. These are the people who run things.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a political theorist at Princeton, described the files as “a sobering x-ray of some of America’s elites — immature, full of impunity, corrupt, venal, venial, and venereal all at once”. He warned that “an elite so needy, greedy, and now so vulnerable can hardly be trusted to exercise good judgment”.

Owen Jones put it bluntly: Mandelson is “the logical culmination of the career politician, attracted to government office not because of any commitment to a set of values or public service, but simply for power, position, and profit”. Jones asked the question that should haunt every democracy: “What is being done now by ministers and politicians to secure preferment and nice jobs later?”

The Economist observed on the Epstein-Mandelson scandal that “a weakened elite is also more vulnerable to populism” and that “public opinion is less tolerant of hypocrisy than of sex scandals or corruption”. A record 43 percent of Americans surveyed by Gallup now say they have “very little faith” in big business.

The political lesson people take from the documents is broader: elites protect elites. And once voters accept that as a general pattern, they start to look at their own politics differently. They see the local versions: the donor dinners, the quietly arranged appointments, the lobbyists writing submissions, the ministers lining up post-parliament careers. They start to interpret routine insider politics as corruption-by-another-name.

So what does this mean for New Zealand?
It’s easy to shrug this off as a foreign horror story. That shrug is the vulnerability.
New Zealand has no lobbying regulations. None. No register, no code of conduct, no cooling-off period for ministers who walk out of the Beehive and into lobbying firms or corporate boardrooms.

We rank 42nd out of 48 OECD countries on lobbying transparency. NZ is ahead of only Slovakia, Luxembourg, and Turkey. Yet Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith has said lobbying reform “is not a priority”.

As The NZ Herald editorial argued on the Epstein scandal, “what this all reveals . . .  is how utterly certain those in power are that they will be protected”. That certainty, and that sense of impunity, is not confined to Manhattan townhouses and Caribbean islands. It operates wherever wealth and politics intersect without adequate transparency.

Our own political history provides uncomfortable parallels. Minister Stuart Nash was sacked in 2023 for emailing confidential Cabinet information to wealthy donors, a mini-parallel to Mandelson’s alleged leaking of market-sensitive information to Epstein.

But in Nash’s case, he lost his ministerial role without ever facing a police investigation. The structural failure is the same: the revolving door, the undisclosed lobbying, the donation loopholes, the absence of any meaningful cooling-off period.

If the Mandelson affair teaches one lesson, it is this: weak integrity systems do not just allow bad behaviour, they incentivise it. New Zealand has all of these mechanisms for embedding soft corruption, in weaker form than the UK. We rely on a “she’ll be right” attitude in place of the institutional safeguards that comparable democracies take for granted.

The example of Peter Thiel sharpens this further. Thiel is a New Zealand citizen. He is also a billionaire power broker in Silicon Valley and a funder of rightwing politics who appears prominently in the Epstein files.

That is a reminder: New Zealand has granted citizenship, and effectively social legitimacy, to a man who sits inside the very global plutocratic networks now being publicly scrutinised for moral collapse and elite impunity. Thiel is symbolic because he represents something New Zealand has not seriously confronted: the country’s relationship with the global super-rich, and the way money can smooth entry into our political community.

Meanwhile, public trust in New Zealand’s institutions has collapsed. The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer showed New Zealand’s trust index falling below the global average for the first time: 47 percent compared to 56 percent globally. Political parties are the least trusted institution, at just 32 percent according to the OECD’s 2024 survey. And the anti-politics mood is deepening.

The recent McSkimming police corruption scandal, where a Deputy Commissioner’s misconduct was systematically covered up, has already forced a national debate about the “C-word”. The ground was prepared before the Epstein files even arrived.

An election-year wake-up call
So what happens when this mood hits an election year? November 7 is nine months away, and the Epstein scandal feeds directly into a public mood that was already getting toxic.
The danger here is not that the public demands accountability. The danger is that the public concludes accountability is impossible, because the system is so captured by insiders and vested interests that reform cannot come from within.

Scandals like this feed anti-politics. People conclude that “they’re all the same,” that it’s a rigged game, that power protects itself. But the same disgust can create reform pressure. When trust collapses, political promises about integrity stop being an optional add-on.

They become central. Voters start demanding answers: who is lobbying whom? Who is funding whom? Why do politicians leave office and immediately cash in? Why are conflicts of interest treated as personal errors rather than structural failures?

No party in New Zealand “owns” the anti-corruption space. That’s also both a vulnerability and an opening. The party or leader who takes integrity reform seriously in 2026 — who makes the lobbying register, the donation caps, the Integrity Commission a genuine campaign commitment rather than a footnote — will be tapping into something powerful and real.

The party that ignores it will be betting that public anger stays diffuse. That would be a bad bet.

The global mood of elite scepticism will shape this election whether our politicians like it or not. Voters are more suspicious than ever of cosy relationships between politicians and the wealthy. They are less willing to accept opacity, conflicts of interest, and the revolving door as the price of doing business.

Chris Trotter, writing today in The Interest, argues there are “heaps of lessons New Zealanders can learn from what is unfolding in the United Kingdom”. He is right. New Zealand has an opportunity to get ahead of the global backlash. We can build the transparency infrastructure — the lobbying register, the Integrity Commission, the cooling-off rules — that most comparable democracies already have.

Or we can keep pretending that we are too small and too decent for this kind of corruption, and wait for the next scandal to prove us wrong.

Starmer’s warning to his own cabinet, that “the public don’t really see individuals in this scandal, they see politicians”, applies here too. New Zealanders are watching the Mandelson affair, they’re reading the files, and they’re drawing the obvious conclusion: that the people who run the world are not to be trusted, and the systems meant to hold them accountable are broken.

A country can’t keep shrugging at unregulated influence while telling voters to trust the system. If New Zealand’s political class wants to avoid the kind of legitimacy collapse now unfolding overseas, the time to act is now. Not after the next (inevitable) scandal.

An immediate test
And here is the immediate test. Transparency International is releasing its annual Corruption Perceptions Index. For the last couple of decades, New Zealand’s showing in the index has been in decline. Our score has slipped from the mid-90s to 83, and our ranking has dropped to fourth globally, now seven points behind Denmark.

Will this decline continue? If it does, it will be one more data point confirming what voters already sense: that the gap between New Zealand’s self-image as a clean, transparent democracy and the reality of our thin integrity architecture is growing wider.

The Epstein files have taken the back off the world clock. New Zealanders can see the mechanism now. The question is what do we do about it?

Dr Bryce Edwards is a political commentator and analyst. He is director of the Democracy Project, focused on scrutinising and challenging the role of vested interests in the political process. Republished with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Israeli death toll has risen to 24, with 400 injured and more than 2700 people displaced.

Israeli authorities report 370 missiles fired by Iran in total, 30 reaching their targets. Iranian military report they have carried out 550 drone operations.

224 killed in Iran
Two hundred and twenty four people have been killed by Israeli attacks on Iran, with 1277 hospitalised.

The state radio and television building was targeted by Israeli strikes twice — while broadcasting live — with the broadcast back online within 5 minutes despite the attack.

In response, Iran has issued a warning to evacuate the central offices of Israeli television channels 12 and 14.

An Israeli attack on a Red Crescent ambulance in Tehran resulted in the deaths of two relief workers.

Israel’s Finance Minister Belazel Smotrich, who is accused of being a war criminal and the target of sanctions by five countries including New Zealand, claims they have hit 800 targets in Iran, with aircraft flying freely in the nation’s airspace.

In the West Bank, the tension continues, with business continuing at a subdued level, everyone waiting to see how the situation will unfold.

Israel’s illegal siege continues, cutting off cities and villages from one another, while blocking ambulances and urgent medical access in several locations today.

Israeli and Iranian strikes are expected to continue, and potentially escalate, over the coming days.

Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues.

Cole Martin is an independent New Zealand photojournalist based in the Middle East and a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The US District Court for the District of Columbia has granted a preliminary injunction in Widakuswara v Lake, affirming the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) was unlawfully shuttered by the Trump administration, Acting Director Victor Morales and Special Adviser Kari Lake.

The decision enshrines that USAGM must fulfill its legally required functions and protects the editorial independence of Voice of America (VOA) journalists and other federal media professionals within the agency and newsrooms that receive grants from the agency, such as Radio Free Asia and others with implications for independent media in the Asia-Pacific region.

Journalists, federal workers, and unions celebrate this important step in defending this critical agency, First Amendment rights, resisting unlawful political interference in public broadcasting, and ensuring USAGM workers can continue to fulfill their congressionally mandated function, reports the News Guild-CWA press union.

“Today’s ruling is a victory for the rule of law, for press freedom and journalistic integrity, and for democracy worldwide,” said the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) national president Everett Kelley.

“The Trump administration’s illegal attempt to shutter Voice of America and other outlets under the US Agency for Global Media was a transparent effort to silence the voices of patriotic journalists and professionals who have dedicated their careers to spreading the truth and fighting propaganda from lawless authoritarian regimes.

“This preliminary injunction will allow these employees to get back to work as we continue the fight to preserve their jobs and critical mission.”

President Lee Saunders of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees AFSCME), the largest trade union of public employees in the United States, said: “Today’s ruling is a major win for AFSCME members and Voice of America workers who have dedicated their careers to reporting the truth and spreading freedom to millions across the world.

Judge’s message clear
“The judge’s message is clear — this administration has no right to unilaterally dismantle essential agencies simply because they do not agree with their purpose.

“We celebrate this decision and will continue to work with our partners to ensure that the Voice of America is restored.”

“Journalists hold power to account and that includes the Trump administration,” said NewsGuild-CWA president Jon Schleuss. “This injunction orders the administration to reverse course and restore the Congressionally-mandated news broadcasts of Radio Free Asia, Voice of America and other newsrooms broadcasting to people who hope for freedom in countries where that is denied.”

“We are gratified by today’s ruling. This is another step in the process to restore VOA to full operation.” said government accountability project senior counsel David Seide.

“Today’s ruling marks a significant victory for press freedom and for the dedicated women and men who bring it to life — our clients, the journalists, executives, and staff of Voice of America,” said Andrew G. Celli, Jr., founding partner at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP and counsel for the plaintiffs.

“VOA is more than just an iconic brand with deep roots in American and global history; it is a vital, living force that provides truth and hope to those living under oppressive regimes.

“We are thrilled that its voice — a voice for the voiceless — will once again be heard loud and clear around the world.

Powerful affirmation of rule of law
“This decision is a powerful affirmation of the rule of law and the vital role that independent journalism plays in our democracy. The court’s action protects independent journalism and federal media professionals at Voice of America as we continue this case, and reaffirms that no administration can silence the truth without accountability,” said Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, co-counsel for the plaintiffs.

“We are proud to be with workers, unions and journalists in resisting political interference against independent journalism and will continue to fight for transparency and our democratic values.”

“Today’s decision is another necessary step in restoring the rule of law and correcting the injustices faced by the workers, reporters, and listeners of Voice of America and US Agency for Global Media,” said former Ambassador Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of the State Democracy Defenders Fund.

“By granting this preliminary injunction, the court has reaffirmed the legal protections afforded to these civil servants and halted an attempt to undermine a free and independent press. We are proud to represent this resilient coalition and support the cause of a free and fair press.”

“This decision is a powerful affirmation of the role that independent journalism plays in advancing democracy and countering disinformation. From Voice of America to Radio Free Asia and across the US Agency for Global Media, these networks are essential tools of American soft power — trusted sources of truth in places where it is often scarce,” said Tom Yazdgerdi, president of the American Foreign Service Association.

“By upholding editorial independence, the court has protected the credibility of USAGM journalists and the global mission they serve.”

A critical victory
“We’re very pleased that Judge Lamberth has recognised that the Trump administration acted improperly in shuttering Voice of America,” said Clayton Weimers, executive director of Reporters Without Borders (RSF) USA.

“The USAGM must act immediately to implement this ruling and put over 1300 VOA employees back to work to deliver reliable information to their audience of millions around the world.”

While only the beginning of what may be a long, hard-fought battle, the court’s decision to grant a preliminary injunction marks a critical victory — not just for VOA journalists, but also for federal workers and the unions that represent them.

It affirms that the rule of law still protects those who speak truth to power.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

COMMENTARY: By Caitlin Johnstone

Israel assassinated a photojournalist in Gaza in an airstrike targeting her family’s home on Wednesday, the day after it was announced that a documentary she appears in would premier in Cannes next month.

Her name was Fatima Hassouna. Nine members of her family were also reportedly killed in the bombing. She was going to get married in a few days.

The documentary is titled Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk, and it’s about Israel’s crimes in Gaza.

In an Instagram post from August of last year, Hassouna wrote the following:

‘If I die, I want a loud death. I don’t want to be just breaking news, or a number in a group; I want a death that the world will hear, an impact that will remain through time, and a timeless image that cannot be buried by time or place.’

Palestinian photographer Fatima Hassouna was killed, along with nine members of her family, in an Israeli airstrike that targeted their home in Gaza on Wednesday.

Hassouna, who had gained international recognition for her photojournalism documenting the impact of Israel’s… pic.twitter.com/y0FEJ60emH

— Middle East Eye (@MiddleEastEye) April 17, 2025

Hassouna said she viewed her camera as a weapon to change the world and defend her family, making the following statements in a video shared by Middle East Eye:

‘As Fatima, I believe that the image and the camera are weapons. So I consider my camera to be my rifle. So many times, in so many situations, I tell my friends, Come and see, it’s not bullets that we load into a rifle.

‘Okay, I’m going to put a memory card into the camera. This is the camera’s bullet, the memory card. It changes the world and defends me. It shows the world what is happening to me and what’s happening to others.

‘So I used to consider this my weapon, that I defend myself with it. And so that my family won’t be forgotten. And so I can document people’s stories, so that my family’s stories too don’t just vanish into thin air.”

‘I want a death that the world will hear’      Video/Audio: Caitlin Johnstone

Israel saw Hassouna’s camera as a weapon too, apparently.

As Ryan Grim observed on Twitter:

‘For this to have been a deliberate act — which it plainly was — consider what that means. A person within the IDF saw the news that Fatma’s film was accepted into Cannes. He/she/they then proposed assassinating her. Other people reviewed the suggestion and approved it. Then other people carried it out.’

Israel has been murdering a record-shattering number of journalists in Gaza while simultaneously blocking any foreign press from accessing the enclave because Israel views journalists as its enemy.

And Israel views journalists as its enemy because Israel is the enemy of truth.

Israel and its Western backers understand that truth and support for Israel are mutually exclusive. Those who support Israel are not interested in the truth, and those who are interested in the truth don’t support Israel.

That’s why the light of journalism is being aggressively snuffed out in Gaza while Israel massively increases its propaganda budget to sway public opinion.

It’s why journalists like Fatima Hassouna are being assassinated while the Western propaganda services known as the mainstream press commit journalistic malpractice to hide the truth of Israel’s crimes.

It’s why Western journalists are banned from Gaza while Western institutions are silencing, deporting, firing and marginalising those who speak out about Israel’s criminality.

Israel and truth cannot coexist. Israel’s enemies know this, and Israel knows this. That’s why Israel’s primary weapons are bombs, bullets, propaganda, censorship, and obstruction, while the main weapon of Israel’s enemies is the camera.

Fatima Hassouna’s death has indeed been heard. All these loud noises are snapping more and more eyes open from their slumber.

Caitlin Johnstone is an Australian independent journalist and poet. Her articles include The UN Torture Report On Assange Is An Indictment Of Our Entire Society. She publishes a website and Caitlin’s Newsletter. This article is republished with permission.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

In 1979, Sam Neill appeared in an Australian comedy movie about hacks on a Sydney newspaper.

The Journalist was billed as “a saucy, sexy, funny look at a man with a nose for scandal and a weakness for women”.

That would probably not fly these days — but as a rule, movies about Australian journalists are no laughing matter.

Back in 1982, a young Mel Gibson starred as a foreign correspondent who was dropped into Jakarta during revolutionary chaos in The Year of Living Dangerously. The 1967 events the movie depicted were real enough, but Mel Gibson’s correspondent Guy Hamilton was made up for what was essentially a romantic drama.

There was no romance and a lot more real life 25 years later in Balibo, another movie with Australian journalists in harm’s way during Indonesian upheaval.

Anthony La Paglia had won awards for his performance as Roger East, a journalist killed in what was then East Timor — now Timor-Leste — in December 1975. East was killed while investigating the fate of five other journalists — including New Zealander Guy Cunningham — who was killed during the Indonesian invasion two months earlier.

The Correspondent has a happier ending but is still a tough watch — especially for its subject.

Met in London newsrooms
I first met Peter Greste in newsrooms in London about 30 years ago. He had worked for Reuters, CNN, and the BBC — going on to become a BBC correspondent in Afghanistan.

He later reported from Belgrade, Santiago, and then Nairobi, from where he appeared regularly on RNZ’s Nine to Noon as an African news correspondent. Greste later joined the English-language network of the Doha-based Al Jazeera and became a worldwide story himself while filling in as the correspondent in Cairo.

Greste and two Egyptian colleagues, Baher Mohamed and Mohamed Fahmy, were arrested in late 2013 on trumped-up charges of aiding and abetting the Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation labeled “terrorist” by the new Egyptian regime of the time.

Six months later he was sentenced to seven years in jail for “falsifying news” and smearing the reputation of Egypt itself. Mohamed was sentenced to 10 years.

Media organisations launched an international campaign for their freedom with the slogan “Journalism is not a crime”. Peter’s own family became familiar faces in the media while working hard for his release too.

Peter Greste was deported to Australia in February 2015. The deal stated he would serve the rest of his sentence there, but the Australian government did not enforce that. Instead, Greste became a professor of media and journalism, currently at Macquarie University in Sydney.

Movie consultant
Among other things, he has also been a consultant on The Correspondent — now in cinemas around New Zealand — with Richard Roxborough cast as Greste himself.

Greste told The Sydney Morning Herald he had to watch it “through his fingers” at first.

“I eventually came to realise it’s not me that’s up there on the screen. It’s the product of a whole bunch of creatives. And the result is … more like a painting rather than a photograph,” Greste told Mediawatch.

“Over the years I’ve written about it, I’ve spoken about it countless times. I’ve built a career on it. But I wasn’t really anticipating the emotional impact of seeing the craziness of my arrest, the confusion of that period, the claustrophobia of the cell, the sheer frustration of the crazy trial and the really discombobulating moment of my release.

“But there is another very difficult story about what happened to a colleague of mine in Somalia, which I haven’t spoken about publicly. Seeing that on screen was actually pretty gut-wrenching.”

In 2005, his BBC colleague Kate Peyton was shot alongside him on their first day in on assignment in Somalia. She died soon after.

“That was probably the toughest day of my entire life far over and above anything I went through in Egypt. But I am glad that they put it in [The Correspondent]. It underlines … the way in which journalism is under attack. What happened to us in Egypt wasn’t a random, isolated incident — but part of a much longer pattern we’re seeing continue to this day.”

‘Owed his life’
Greste says he “owes his life” to fellow prisoner Alaa Abd El-Fattah — an Egyptian activist who is also in the film.

“There’s a bit of artistic licence in the way it was portrayed but . . .  he is easily one of the most intelligent, astute and charismatic humanitarians I’ve ever come across. He was one of the main pro-democracy activists who was behind the Arab Spring revolution in 2011 — a true democrat.

“He also inspired me to write the letters that we smuggled out of prison that described our arrest not as an attack on … what we’d actually come to represent. And that was press freedom.

“That helped frame the campaign that ultimately got me out. So, for both psychological and political reasons, I feel like I owe him my life.

“There was nothing in our reporting that confirmed the allegations against us. So I started to drag up all sorts of demons from the past. I started thinking maybe this is the universe punishing me for sins of the past. I was obviously digging up that particular moment as one of the most extreme and tragic moments. It took a long time for me to get past it.

“He’d been in prison a lot because of his activism, so he understood the psychology of it. He also understood the politics of it in ways that I could never do as a newcomer.”

“Unfortunately, he is still there. He should have been released on September 29th last year. His mother launched a hunger strike in London . . . so I actually joined her on hunger strike earlier this year to try and add pressure.

“If this movie also draws a bit of attention to his case, then I think that’s an important element.”

Another wrinkle
Another wrinkle in the story was the situation of his two Egyptian Al Jazeera colleagues.

Greste was essentially a stranger to them, having only arrived in Egypt shortly before their arrest.

The film shows Greste clashing with Fahmy, who later sued Al Jazeera. Fahmy felt the international pressure to free Greste was making their situation worse by pushing the Egyptian regime into a corner.

“To call it a confrontation is probably a bit of an understatement. We had some really serious arguments and sometimes they got very, very heated. But I want audiences to really understand Fahmy’s worldview in this film.

“He and I had very different understandings of what was going … and how those differences played out.

“I’ve got a hell of a lot of respect for him. He is like a brother to me. That doesn’t mean we always agreed with each other and doesn’t mean we always got on with each other like any siblings, I suppose.”

His colleagues were eventually released on bail shortly after Greste’s deportation in 2015.

Fahmy renounced his Egyptian citizenship and was later deported to Canada, while Mohamed was released on bail and eventually pardoned.

Retrial — all ‘reconvicted’
“After I was released there was a retrial … and we were all reconvicted. They were finally released and pardoned, but the pardon didn’t extend to me.

“I can’t go back because I’m still a convicted ‘terrorist’ and I still have an outstanding prison sentence to serve, which is a little bit weird. Any country that has an extradition treaty with Egypt is a problem. There are a fairly significant number of those across the Middle East and Africa.”

Greste told Mediawatch his conviction was even flagged in transit in Auckland en route from New York to Sydney. He was told he failed a character test.

“I was able to resolve it. I had some friends in Canberra and were able to sort it out, but I was told in no uncertain terms I’m not allowed into New Zealand without getting a visa because of that criminal record.

“If I’m traveling to any country I have to say … I was convicted on terrorism offences. Generally speaking, I can explain it, but it often takes a lot of bureaucratic process to do that.”

Greste’s first account of his time in jail — The First Casualty — was published in 2017. Most of the book was about media freedom around the world, lamenting that the numbers of journalists jailed and killed increased after his release.

Something that Greste also now ponders a lot in his current job as a professor of media and journalism.

Ten years on from that, it is worse again. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says at least 124 journalists and media workers were killed last year, nearly two-thirds of them Palestinians killed by Israel in its war in Gaza.

The book has now been updated and republished as The Correspondent.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

One of the many casualties of the Trump administration’s crackdown on “soft power” that enabled many democratic media and truth to power global editorial initiatives has been BenarNews, a welcome contribution to the Asia-Pacific region.

BenarNews had been producing a growing range of insightful on powerful articles on the region’s issues, articles that were amplified by other media such as Asia Pacific Report.

Managing editor Kate Beddall and her deputy, Imran Vittachi, announced the suspension of the decade-old BenarNews editorial operation this week, stating in their “Letter from the editors”:

“After 10 years of reporting from across the Asia-Pacific, BenarNews is pausing operations due to matters beyond its control.

“The US administration has withheld the funding that we rely on to bring our readers and viewers the news from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, the Philippines and island-states and territories in the Pacific.

“We have always strived to offer clear and accurate news on security, politics and human rights, to shed light on news that others neglect or suppress, and to cover issues that will shape the future of Asia and the Pacific.

“Only last month, we marked our 10th anniversary with a video showcasing some of the tremendous but risky work done by our journalists.

“Amid uncertainty about the future, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank our readers and viewers for their loyalty and trust in BenarNews.

“And to Benar journalists, cartoonists and commentary writers in Washington, Asia, Australia and the Pacific, thank you for your hard work and passion in serving the public and helping make a difference.

“We hope that our funding is restored and that we will be back online soon.”

BenarNews: A decade of truth in democracies at risk.    Video: BenarNews

One of the BenarNews who has contributed much to the expansion of Pacific coverage is Brisbane-based former SBS Pacific television journalist Stefan Ambruster.

He has also been praising his team in a series of social media postings, such as Papua New Guinea correspondent Harlyne Joku — “from the old school with knowledge of the old ways”. Ambruster writes:

“Way back in December 2022, Harlyne Joku joined Radio Free Asia/BenarNews and the first Pacific correspondent Stephen Wright as the PNG reporter to help kick this Pacific platform off.

“Her first report was Prime Minister James Marape accusing the media of creating a bad perception of the country.

“Almost 90 stories in just over two years carry Harlyne’s byline, covering politics, geopolitics, human and women’s rights, media freedom, police and tribal violence, corruption, Bougainville, and also PNG’s sheep.

“Her contacts allowed BenarNews Pacific to break stories consistently. She travelled to be on-ground to cover massacre aftermaths, natural disasters and the Pope in Vanimo (where she broke another story).

“Particularly, Harlyne — along with colleagues Victor Mambor in Jayapura and Ahmad Panthoni and Dandy Koswaraputra in Jakarta — allowed BenarNews, to cover West Papua like no other news service. From both sides of the border.

“And it was noticed in Indonesia, PNG and the Pacific region.

“Last year, she was barred from covering President Probowo Subianto’s visit to Moresby, a move condemned by the Media Council of Papua New Guinea.

“At press conferences she questioned Marape about the failure to secure a UN human rights mission to West Papua, as a Melanesian Spearhead Group special envoy, which led to an eventual apology by fellow envoy, Fiji’s Prime Minister Rabuka, to Pacific leaders.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Aotearoa New Zealand union representing many of NZME’s journalists says it is “deeply worried” by a billionaire’s plans to take over its board.

Auckland-based Canadian billionaire Jim Grenon is leading a move to dump the board of media company NZME, owners of The New Zealand Herald and NewsTalk ZB.

He has told the company’s board he wants to remove most of the current directors, replace them with himself and three others, and choose one existing director to stay on.

He took a nearly 10 percent stake in the business earlier in the week.

Michael Wood, negotiation specialist at E tū, the union that represents NZME’s journalists, said he had grave concerns.

“We see a pattern that has been incredibly unhealthy in other countries, of billionaire oligarchs moving into media ownership roles to be able to promote their own particular view of the word,” he said.

“Secondly, we have a situation here where when Mr Grenon purchased holdings in NZME he was at pains to make it sound like an innocent manoeuvre with no broader agenda . . .  within a few days he is aggressively pursuing board positions.”

What unsaid agendas?
Wood said Grenon had a track record of trying to influence media discourse in New Zealand.

“We are deeply concerned about this, about what unsaid agendas lie behind a billionaire oligarch trying to take ownership of one of our biggest media companies.”

“We are deeply concerned about this, about what unsaid agendas lie behind a billionaire oligarch trying to take ownership of one of our biggest media companies.”

He said it would be important for New Zealand not to follow the example of the US, where media outlets had become “the mouthpiece for the rich and powerful”.

E tū would consult its national delegate committee of journalists, he said.

Grenon has been linked with alternative news sites, including The Centrist, serving as the company’s director up to August 2023.

The Centrist claims to present under-served perspectives and reason-based analysis, “even if it might be too hot for the mainstream media to handle”.

Grenon has been approached for comment by RNZ.

Preoccupations with trans rights, treaty issues
Duncan Greive, founder of The Spinoff and media commentator, said he was a reader of Grenon’s site The Centrist.

“The main thing we know about him is that publication,” Greive said.

“It’s largely news aggregation but it has very specific preoccupations around trans rights, treaty issues and particularly vaccine injury and efficacy.

“A lot of the time it’s aggregating from mainstream news sites but there’s a definite feel that things are under-covered or under-emphasised at mainstream news organisations.

“If he is looking to gain greater control and exert influence on the publishing and editorial aspects of the business, you’ve got to think there is a belief that those things are under-covered and the editorial direction of The Herald isn’t what he would like it to be.”

Greive said the move could be connected to the NZME announcement in its annual results that it was exploring options for the sale of its real estate platform OneRoof.

“There are a lot of investors who believe OneRoof is being held back by proximity to the ‘legacy media’ assets of NZME and if it could be pulled out of there the two businesses would be more valuable separate than together.

“If you look at the shareholder book of NZME, you don’t image a lot of these institutional investors who hold the bulk of the shares are going to be as excited about editorial direction and issues as Grenon would be . . .  but they would be excited about the sale of OneRoof.”

Wanting the publishing side
Greive said he could imagine a scenario where Grenon told shareholders he wanted the publishing side, at a reduced value, and the OneRoof business could be separated off.

“From a pure value realisation, maximisation of shareholder value point of view, that makes sense to me.”

Greive said attention would now go on the 37 percent of shareholders whom Grenon said had been consulted in confidence about his plans.

“It will become clear pretty quickly and they will be under pressure to say why they are involved in this and it will become clear pretty quickly whether my theory is correct.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A New Zealand-based community education provider, Dark Times Academy, has had a US Embassy grant to deliver a course teaching Pacific Islands journalists about disinformation terminated after the new Trump administration took office.

The new US administration requested a list of course participants and to review the programme material amid controversy over a “freeze” on federal aid policies.

The course presentation team refused and the contract was terminated by “mutual agreement” — but the eight-week Pacific workshop is going ahead anyway from next week.

“As far as I can tell, the current foreign policy priorities of the US government seem to involve terrorising the people of Gaza, annexing Canada, invading Greenland, and bullying Panama,” said Dark Times Academy co-founder Mandy Henk.

“We felt confident that a review of our materials would not find them to be aligned with those priorities.”

The course, called “A Bit Sus”, is an evidence-based peer-reviewed series of classes that teach key professions the skills needed to identify and counter disinformation and misinformation in their particular field.

The classes focus on “prebunking”, lateral reading, and how technology, including generative AI, influences disinformation.

Awarded competitive funds
Dark Times Academy was originally awarded the funds to run the programme through a public competitive grant offered by the US Embassy in New Zealand in 2023 under the previous US administration.

The US Embassy grant was focused on strengthening the capacity of Pacific media to identify and counter disinformation. While funded by the US, the course was to be a completely independent programme overseen by Dark Times Academy and its academic consultants.

Co-founder Henk was preparing to deliver the education programme to a group of Pacific Island journalists and media professionals, but received a request from the US Embassy in New Zealand to review the course materials to “ensure they are in line with US foreign policy priorities”.

Henk said she and the other course presenters refused to allow US government officials to review the course material for this purpose.

She said the US Embassy had also requested a “list of registered participants for the online classes,” which Dark Times Academy also declined to provide as compliance would have violated the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020.

Henk said the refusal to provide the course materials for review led immediately to further discussions with the US Embassy in New Zealand that ultimately resulted in the termination of the grant “by mutual agreement”.

However, she said Dark Times Academy would still go ahead with running the course for the Pacific Island journalists who had signed up so far, starting on February 26.

Continuing the programme
“The Dark Times Academy team fully intends to continue to bring the ‘A Bit Sus’ programme and other classes to the Pacific region and New Zealand, even without the support of the US government,” Henk said.

“As noted when we first announced this course, the Pacific Islands have experienced accelerated growth in digital connectivity over the past few years thanks to new submarine cable networks and satellite technology.

“Alongside this, the region has also seen a surge in harmful rumours and disinformation that is increasingly disrupting the ability to share accurate and truthful information across Pacific communities.

“This course will help participants from the media recognise common tactics used by disinformation agents and support them to deploy proven educational and communications techniques.

“By taking a skills-based approach to countering disinformation, our programme can help to spread the techniques needed to mitigate the risks posed by digital technologies,” Henk said.

Especially valuable for journalists
Dark Times Academy co-founder Byron Clark said the course would be especially valuable for journalists in the Pacific region given the recent shifts in global politics and the current state of the planet.

“We saw the devastating impacts of disinformation in the Pacific region during the measles outbreak in Samoa, for example,” said Clark, author of the best-selling book Fear: New Zealand’s Underworld of Hostile Extremists.

“With Pacific Island states bearing the brunt of climate change, as well as being caught between a geopolitical stoush between China and the West, a course like this one is timely.”

Henk said the “A Bit Sus” programme used a “high-touch teaching model” that combined the current best evidence on how to counter disinformation with a “learner-focused pedagogy that combines discussion, activities, and a project”.

Past classes led to the creation of the New Zealand version of the “Euphorigen Investigation” escape room, a board game, and a card game.

These materials remain in use across New Zealand schools and community learning centres.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

On my office wall hangs a framed portrait of Shireen Abu Akleh, the inspiring and celebrated American-Palestinian journalist known across the Middle East to watchers of Al Jazeera Arabic, who was assassinated by an Israeli military sniper with impunity.

State murder.

She was gunned down in full blue “press” kit almost two years ago while reporting on a raid in the occupied West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp, clearly targeted for her influence as a media witness to Israeli atrocities.

As in the case of all 22 journalists who had been killed by Israeli military until that day, 11 May 2022, nobody was charged.

Now, six months into the catastrophic and genocidal Israeli War on Gaza, some 137 Palestinian journalists have been killed — murdered – by Israeli snipers, or targeted bombs demolishing their homes, and even their families.

Also in my office is pasted a red poster with a bird-of-paradise shaped pen in chains and the legend “Open access for journalists – Free press in West Papua.”

The poster was from a 2017 World Media Freedom Day conference in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, which I attended as a speaker and wrote about. Until this day, there is still no open door for international journalists

Harassed, beaten
Although only one killing of a Papuan journalist is recorded, there have been many instances when local news reporters have been harassed, beaten and threatened – beyond the reach of international media.

Ardiansyah Matra was savagely beaten and his body dumped in the Maro River, Merauke. A spokesperson for the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), Victor Mambor, said at the time: “‘It’s highly likely that his murder is connected with the terror situation for journalists which was occurring at the time of Ardiansyah’s death.”

Frequently harassed himself, Mambor, founder and publisher of Jubi Media, was apparently the target of a suspected bomb attack, or warning, on 23 January 2023, when Jayapura police investigated a blast outside his home in Angkasapura Village.

At first glance, it may seem strange that comparisons are being made between the War on Gaza in the Middle East and the long-smouldering West Papuan human rights crisis in the Asia-Pacific region almost 11,000 km away. But there are several factors at play.

Melanesian and Pacific activists frequently mention both the Palestinian and West Papuan struggles in the same breath. A figure of up to 500,000 deaths among Papuans is often cited as the toll from 1969 when Indonesia annexed the formerly Dutch colony in controversial circumstances under the flawed Act of Free Choice, characterised by critics as the Act of “No” Choice.

The death toll in Gaza after the six-month war on the besieged enclave by Israel is already almost 33,000 (in reality far higher if the unknown number of casualties buried under the rubble is added). Most of the deaths are women and children.

At least 27 children have died of malnutrition so far with numbers expected to rise sharply.

Ethnic cleansing
But there are mounting fears that Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Gazans has no end in sight and the lives of 2.3 million people are at stake.

Both Palestinians and West Papuans see themselves as the victims of violent settler colonial projects that have been stealing their land and destroying their culture under the world’s noses — in the case of Palestine since the Nakba of 1948, and in West Papua since Indonesian paratroopers landed in a botched invasion in 1963.

They see themselves as both confronting genocidal leaders; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose popularity at home sinks by the day with growing protests, and Indonesia’s new President-elect Prabowo Subianto who has an atrocious human rights reputation in both Timor-Leste and West Papua.

And both peoples feel betrayed by a world that has stood by as genocides have been taking place — in the case of Palestine in real time on social media and television screens, and in the case of West Papua slowly over six decades.

Last November, outgoing Indonesian President Joko Widodo confronted US President Joe Biden on his policies over Gaza, and appealed for Washington to do more to prevent atrocities in Palestine.

Indonesian politicians such as Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi have been quick to condemn Israel, including at the International Court of Justice, but Papuan independence leaders find this hypocritical.

“We have full sympathy for the struggle for justice in Palestine and call for the restoration of peace,” said United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) president Benny Wenda.

‘Where’s Indonesian outrage?’
“But what about West Papua? Where was Indonesia’s outrage after Bloody Paniai [2014], or the Wamena massacre in February?

“Indonesia is claiming to oppose genocide in Gaza while committing their own genocide in West Papua.”

“Over 60 years of genocidal colonial rule, over 500,000 West Papuans have been killed by Indonesian forces.”

Wenda said genocide in West Papua was implemented slowly and steadily through a series of massacres, assassinations and policies, such as the killings of the chair of the Papuan Council Theys Eluay in 2001; Mako Tabuni (2012); and cultural curator and artist Arnold Ap (1984).

He cited many independent international and legal expert reports for his “considered position”, such as Yale University Law School, University of Wollongong, and the Asian Human Rights Commission – The Neglected Genocide.

In the South Pacific, Indonesia is widely seen among civil society, university and community groups as a ruthless aggressor with little or no respect for the Papuan culture.

Jakarta is engaged in an intensive diplomacy campaign in an attempt to counter this perception.

Unarmed Palestinians killed in Gaza – revealing Israel’s “kill zones”.  Video: Al Jazeera

Israel’s ‘rogue’ status
But if Indonesia is unpopular in the Pacific over its brutal colonial policies, it is nothing compared to the global “rogue” status of Israel.

In the past few weeks, as atrocity after atrocity pile up and the country’s disregard for international law and United Nations resolutions increasingly shock, supporters appear to be shrinking to its long-term ally the United States and its Five Eyes partners with New Zealand’s coalition government failing to condemn Israel’s war crimes.

On Good Friday — Day 174 of the war – Israel bombed Gaza, Syria and Lebanon on the same day, killing civilians in all three countries.

In the past week, the Israeli military racheted up its attacks on the Gaza Strip in defiance of the UN Security Council’s order for an immediate ceasefire, expanded its savage attacks on neighbouring states, and finally withdrew from Al-Shifa Hospital after a bloody two-week siege, leaving it totally destroyed with at least 350 patients, staff and displaced people dead.

Fourteen votes against the lone US abstention after Washington had earlier vetoed three previous resolutions produced the decisive ceasefire vote, but the Israeli objective is clearly to raze Gaza and make it uninhabitable.

As The Guardian described the vote, “When Gilad Erdan, the Israeli envoy to the UN, sat before the Security Council to rail against the ceasefire resolution it had just passed, he cut a lonelier figure than ever in the cavernous chamber.”

The newspaper added that the message was clear.

‘Time was up’
“Time was up on the Israeli offensive, and the Biden administration was no longer prepared to let the US’s credibility on the world stage bleed away by defending an Israeli government which paid little, if any, heed to its appeals to stop the bombing of civilian areas and open the gates to substantial food deliveries.”

Al Jazeera interviewed Norwegian physician Dr Mads Gilbert, who has spent long periods working in Gaza, including at al-Shifa Hospital. He was visibly distressed in his reaction, lamenting that the Israeli attack had “destroyed” the 78-year legacy of the Strip’s largest and flagship hospital.

Speaking from Tromso, Norway, he said: “This is such a sad day, I’ve been weeping all morning.”

Dr Gilbert said he did not know the fate of the 107 critical patients who had been moved two days earlier to an older building in the complex.

“The maggots that are creeping out of the corpses in al-Shifa Hospital now,” he said, “are really maggots coming out of the eyes of President Biden and the European Union leaders doing nothing to stop this horrible, horrible genocide.”

Australia-based Antony Loewenstein, the author of The Palestine Laboratory, who has been reporting on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories for two decades, described Israel’s attack on the hospital as the “actions of a rogue state”.

Gaza health officials said Israel was targeting all the hospitals and systematically destroying the medical infrastructure. Only five out of a total of 37 hospitals still had some limited services operating.

Strike on journalists’ tent
Yesterday, four people were killed and journalists were wounded in an Israeli air strike on a tent in the courtyard of al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

The Israeli military claimed the strike was aimed at a “command centre” operated by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad armed group, but footage screened by Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary clearly showed it was a tent where displaced people were sheltering and journalists and photographers were working.

The Israeli military have killed another photojournalist and editor, Abdel Wahab Awni, when they bombed his home in the Maghazi refugee camp. This took the number of journalists killed since the start of the war to 137, according to Gaza’s Government Media Office.

Al Jazeera has revealed that Israel was using “kill zones” for certain combat areas in Gaza. Anybody crossing the “invisible” lines into these zones was shot on sight as a “terrorist”, even if they were unarmed civilians.

The chilling practice was exposed when footage was screened of two unarmed civilians carrying white flags being apparently gunned down and then buried by bulldozer under rubble. A US-based civil rights group described the killings as a “heinous crime”.

The kill zones were confirmed at the weekend by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which said the military had claimed to have killed 9000 “terrorists”, but officials admitted that many of the dead were often civilians who had “crossed the line” of fire.

Call for sanctions
The Israeli peace advocacy group Gush Shalom sent an open letter to all the embassies credited to Israel calling for immediate sanctions against the Israeli government, saying Netanyahu was “flagrantly refusing” to comply with the ceasefire resolution.

“We, citizens of Israel,” said the letter, “are calling on your government to initiate a further meeting of the Security Council, aiming to pass a resolution which would set effective sanctions on Israel — in order to bring about an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip until the end of Ramadan and beyond it.”

A Palestinian-American professor of law Dr Noura Erakat, of Rutgers University, recently told a BBC interviewer that Israel had made its end game very clear from the beginning of the war.

“Israel has made its intent clear. Its war cabinet had made its intent clear. From the very beginning, in the first week of October 7, it told us its goal was to depopulate Gaza.

“They have equated the decimation of Hamas, which they cannot achieve militarily, with the depopulation of the entire Gaza strip.”

A parallel with Indonesia’s fundamentally flawed policies in West Papua. Failing violent settler colonialism.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Paris-based global media freedom watchdog RSF (Reporters Without Borders) has appealed for information about the “disappearance” of Palestinian journalist Bayan Abusultan.

She was reportedly last seen on March 19 among people “sequestered” in this week’s raid and siege of Al Shifa hospital by Israeli troops in northern Gaza.

RSF has demanded that the Israeli military “shed light on the disappearance of @BayanPalestine”, her X handle.

On March 19, she posted a message on her X account saying “Israeli forces just murdered my only brother in front of my eyes”.

Israeli forces just murdered my only brother in front of my eyes.
أخويا شهيد.

— Bayan (@BayanPalestine) March 19, 2024

She has not been heard from since and RSF is investigating.

Meanwhile, to support journalists in the region affected by the war in Gaza, RSF has opened a new press freedom centre in the Lebanese capital of Beirut.

Following the opening of two centres in Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s large-scale invasion of the country in 2022, this initiative by RSF underlines the organisation’s ongoing commitment to helping information professionals meet the specific challenges they face.

Equipped with internet access, the Beirut centre, a regional hub for the media in the Middle East, will welcome journalists to work there if they wish.

RSF and its local partners will offer training in physical and digital security, particularly for those wishing to travel to Palestine.

Bullet-proof vests
Access to psychological support and legal assistance will also be provided, as well as protective equipment to cover dangerous areas (bullet-proof vests, helmets, first-aid kits, etc.).

“There is a clear and urgent need to support Palestinian journalism and the right to information throughout the Middle East, particularly the parts of the region most affected by the war in Gaza,” said RSF campaign director Rebecca Vincent.

“Drawing on our experience in Ukraine, where we opened two press freedom centres during the war, RSF is launching a regional centre in Beirut dedicated to supporting journalists.

“The centre will provide a crucial space, and essential services to reinforce the safety of journalists working in the region, and to defend press freedom.”

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with RSF.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Israeli occupation forces are intentionally targeting Palestinian journalists in the besieged Gaza Strip, media outlets warned after three reporters were killed Tuesday bringing the total number of journalists killed since Saturday to seven, reports Middle East Monitor.

The Government Media Office’s Monitoring and Follow-up Unit in Gaza has documented dozens of attacks and crimes against journalists and media outlets.

Israeli attacks have resulted in the killing of seven journalists: Ibrahim Lafi, Muhammad Jarghun, Muhammad Al-Salhi, Asaad Shamlikh, Saeed Al-Taweel, Muhammad Subh Abu Rizq and Hisham Al-Nawajaha.

In addition, “more than 10 journalists have been injured with varying degrees of severity, and they lost contact with two colleagues, Nidal Al-Wahidi and Haitham Abdul-Wahed”.

The monitoring unit added that the homes of journalists Rami Al-Sharafi and Basel Khair Al-Din had been targeted and destroyed.

In contrast, the homes of dozens of other journalists were partially damaged.

Furthermore, dozens of media institutions were either completely or partially damaged by Israeli strikes including on Palestine Tower and Al-Watan Tower, with more than 40 media headquarters being affected, the unit reported.

Despite the risks, the government media office emphasised that their journalists will continue their professional role and national duty in covering the events, exposing the crimes of the occupation and debunking its false claims.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has hailed the news that Narges Mohammadi — an Iranian journalist RSF has been defending for years — has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her “fight against the oppression of women in Iran,” her courage and determination.

Persecuted by the Iranian authorities since the late 1990s for her work, and imprisoned again since November 2021, she must be freed at once, RSF declared in a statement.

“Speak to save Iran” is the title of one of the letters published by Mohammadi from Evin prison, near Tehran, where she has been serving a sentence of 10 years and 9 months in prison since 16 November 2021.

She has also been sentenced to hundreds of lashes. The maker of a documentary entitled White Torture and the author of a book of the same name, Mohammadi has never stopped denouncing the sexual violence inflicted on women prisoners in Iran.

It is this fight against the oppression of women that the Nobel Committee has just saluted by awarding the Peace Prize to this 51-year-old journalist and human rights activist, the former vice-president of the Defenders of Human Rights Centre, the Iranian human rights organisation that was created by Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian lawyer who was herself awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

It is because of this fight that Mohammadi has been hounded by the Iranian authorities, who continue to persecute her in prison.

She has been denied visits and telephone calls since 12 April 2022, cutting her off from the world.

White Torture: The infamy of solitary confinement in Iran with Narges Mohammadi.

New charges
At the same time, the authorities in Evin prison have brought new charges to keep her in detention.

On August 4, her jail term was increased by a year after the publication of another of her letters about violence against fellow women detainees.

Mohammadi was awarded the RSF Prize for Courage on 12 December 2023. At the award ceremony in Paris, her two children, whom she has not seen for eight years, read one of the letters she wrote to them from prison.

“In this country, amid all the suffering, all the fears and all the hopes, and when, after years of imprisonment, I am behind bars again and I can no longer even hear the voices of my children, it is with a heart full of passion, hope and vitality, full of confidence in the achievement of freedom and justice in my country that I will spend time in prison,” she wrote.

She ended the letter with a call to keep alive “the hope of victory”.

RSF secretary-general Christophe Deloire said:

“It is with immense emotion that I learn that the Nobel Peace Prize is being awarded to the journalist and human rights defender Narges Mohammadi.

At Reporters Without Borders (RSF), we have been fighting for her for years, alongside her husband and her two children, and with Shirin Ebadi. The Nobel Peace Prize will obviously be decisive in obtaining her release.”

On June 7, RSF referred the unacceptable conditions in which Mohammadi is being detained to all of the relevant UN human rights bodies.

During an oral update to the UN Human Rights Council on July 5, the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran expressed concern over the “continued detention of human rights defenders and lawyers defending the protesters, and at least 17 journalists”.

It is thanks to Mohammadi’s journalistic courage that the world knows what is happening in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s prisons, where 20 journalists are currently detained.

They included three other women: Elaheh Mohammadi, Niloofar Hamedi and Vida Rabbani.

Pacific Media Watch collaborates with Reporters Without Borders.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

No government likes to be called out for human rights abuses and it’s uncomfortable to do so, particularly when the abuser is either a friend or a country with which we have strong economic links.

In our relations with China, this is a difficult issue for us.

However, we should always expect our government to speak out for human rights and the case can be made that Chris Hipkins was too soft on his visit to China last week. The impression was of a laid-back Prime Minister failing to convey any of the serious concerns expressed by credible and principled human rights organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

It seems New Zealand is leaving the heavy lifting on human rights to Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta who, in her own words, had a robust discussion with China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs on these issues earlier this year.

An Australian report said she was “harangued” from the Chinese side, although this was denied by Mahuta.

Hipkins, as Prime Minister, has our loudest voice and he should have publicly backed up our Foreign Minister.

If we want to be regarded as a good global citizen, we have to speak out clearly and act consistently, irrespective of where human rights abuses take place. This is where New Zealand has fallen down repeatedly.

Looking the other way
We have been happy to strongly condemn Russia and announced economic and diplomatic sanctions within a few hours of its invasion of Ukraine but we look the other way when a country guilty of abuses is close to the US.

In regard to the longest military occupation in modern history, Israel’s occupation of Palestine, we have been weak and inconsistent over many decades in calling for Palestinian human rights.

It hasn’t always been like that.

In late 2016, the National government, under John Key as prime minister, co-sponsored a United Nations Security Council resolution (UNSC2334 – NZ was a security council member at the time) which was passed in a 14–0 vote. The US abstained.

The resolution states that, in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israeli settlements had “no legal validity” and constituted “a flagrant violation under international law”. It said they were a “major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace” in the Middle East.

Video shows the moment journalists said they were directly fired at by Israeli soldiers whilst they were covering the raid in Jenin refugee camp ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/OBQ5aS5c0A

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 3, 2023

So why does this matter now?

Because Israel has elected a new extremist government that has declared its intention to make illegal settlement building on Palestinian land its “top priority”. Early this week it announced plans for 5000 more homes for these illegal settlements, which a Palestinian official described as “part of an open war against the Palestinian people”.

Israel shows world middle finger
Israel is showing Palestinians, and the world, its middle finger.

At least nine people have been killed and scores wounded in the latest Israeli military attack on Palestinians in what is being described as a “real massacre” in Jenin refugee camp.

UNSC 2334 didn’t just criticise Israel. It called for action. It also asked member countries of the United Nations “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967″.

In practical terms, this means requiring our government and local authorities to refuse to purchase any goods or services from companies (both Israeli and foreign-owned) that operate in illegal Israeli settlements.

This ban should also be extended to the 112 companies identified by the UN Human Rights Council as complicit in the building and maintenance of these illegal Israeli settlements.

The government should be actively discouraging our Superannuation Fund and KiwiSaver providers from investing in these complicit companies but an analysis earlier this year showed the Super Fund investments in these companies have close to doubled in the past two years.

Some countries have begun following through on UNSC 2334 but New Zealand has been inert. We have not been prepared to back up our words at the United Nations with action here.

West Papua deserves our voice
Following through would mean we were standing up for human rights for everyone living in Palestine. We could expect our government to face false smears of anti-semitism from Israel’s leaders and their friends here but we would receive heartfelt thanks from a people who have suffered immeasurably for 75 years.

Palestinians are the largest group of refugees internationally — 5.9 million — after being driven off their land by Israeli militias in 1947-1949. Every day, more of their land is stolen for illegal settlements while we avert our gaze.

The Indonesian military occupation of West Papua and Morocco’s occupation of Western Sahara also deserve our voice on the side of the victims.

Standing up for human rights is not comfortable when it means challenging supposed friends or allies. But we owe it to ourselves, and to those being brutally oppressed, to do more than mouth platitudes.

These peoples deserve our support and solidarity. Let’s not look the other way. Let’s act.

John Minto is national chair of Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa. This article was first published in The New Zealand Herald but is republished with the permission of the author.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Fiji government is signalling that it will not completely tear down the country’s controversial media law which, according to local newsrooms and journalism commentators, has stunted press freedom and development for more than a decade.

Ahead of the 2022 general elections last December, all major opposition parties campaigned to get rid of the Media Industry Development Act (MIDA) 2010 — brought in by the Bainimarama administration — if they got into power.

The change in government after 16 years following the polls brought a renewed sense of hope for journalists and media outlets.

But now almost 100 days in charge it appears Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka’s coalition is backtracking on its promise to get rid of the punitive law, a move that has been condemned by the industry stakeholders.

“The government is totally committed to allowing people the freedom of the press that will include the review of the Media Act,” Rabuka said during a parliamentary session last month.

“I believe we cannot have a proper democracy without a free press which has been described as the oxygen of democracy,” he said.

Rabuka has denied that his government is backtracking on an election promise.

“Reviewing could mean eventually repealing it,” he told RNZ Pacific in February.

“We have to understand how it [media act] is faring in this modern day of media freedom. How have other administrations advance their own association with the media,” he said.

He said he intended to change it which means “review and make amendments to it”.

“The coalition has given an assurance that we will end that era of media oppression. We are discussing new legislation that reflects more democratic values.”

And last week, that discussion happened for the first time when consultations on a refreshed version of a draft regulation began in Suva as the government introduced the Media Ownership and Registration Bill 2023.

The bill is expected to “address issues that are undemocratic, threatens freedom of expression, and hinders the growth and development of a strong and independent news media in Fiji.”

The proposed law will amend the MIDA Act by removing the punitive clauses on content regulation that threatens journalists with heavy fines and jail terms.

“The bill is not intended as a complete reform of Fiji’s media law landscape,” according to the explanations provided by the government.

No need for government involvement
But the six-page proposed regulation is not what the media industry needs, according to the University of the South Pacific’s head of journalism programme Associate Professor Shailendra Singh.

“We have argued there is no need for legislation,” he said during the public consultation on the bill last Thursday.

“The existing laws are sufficient but if there has to be a legislation there should be minimum or no government involvement at all,” he said.

The Fijian Media Association (FMA) has also expressed strong opposition against the bill and is calling for the MIDA Act to be repealed.

“If there is a need for another legislation, then government can convene fresh consultation with stakeholders if these issues are not adequately addressed in other current legislation,” the FMA, which represents almost 150 working journalists in Fiji, stated.

Speaking on behalf of his colleagues, FMA executive member and Communications Fiji Limited news director Vijay Narayan said “we want a total repeal” of the Media Act.

“We believe that it was brought about without consultation at all…it was shoved down our throats,” Narayan said.

“We have worked with it for 16 years. We have been staring at the pointy end of the spear and we continue to work hard to build our industry despite the challenges we face.”

‘Restrictions stunts growth’
He said the Fiji’s media industry “needs investment” to improve its standards.

Narayan said the FMA acknowledged that the issue of content regulation was addressed in the new law.

But “with the restrictions in investment that also stunts our growth as media workers,” he added.

“The fact that it will be controlled by politicians there is a real fear. What if we have reporting on something and the politician feels that the organisation that is registered should be reregistered.”

The FMA has also raised concerns about the provisions in relation to cross-media ownership and foreign ownership as key issues that impacts on media development and creates an unequal playing field.

Sections 38 and 39 of the Media Act impose restrictions on foreign ownership on local local media organisations and cross-media ownership.

According to a recent analysis of the Act co-authored by Dr Singh, they are a major impediment to media development and need to be re-examined.

“It would be prudent to review the media ownership situation and reforms periodically, every four-five years, to gauge the impact, and address any issues, that may have arisen,” the report recommends.

But Suva lawyer and coalition government adviser Richard Naidu is of the view that all issues in respect to the news media should be opened up.

Naidu, who has helped draft the proposed new legislation, said it “has preserved the status quo” and the rules of cross-ownership and foreign media ownership were left as they were in the Media Act.

“Is that right? That is a question of opinion…because before the [MIDA Act] there were no rules on cross-media ownership, there were no rules on foreign media ownership.”

Naidu said the MIDA Act was initially introduced as a bill and media had two hours to to offer its views on it before its implementation.

“So, which status quo ought to be preserved; the one before the [MIDA Act] was imposed or the one as it stands right now. Those are legitimate questions.”

“There is a whole range of things which need to be reviewed and which will probably take a bit of time.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

SPECIAL REPORT: By Phil Thornton

In the two years since Myanmar’s military seized power from the country’s elected lawmakers it has waged a war of terror against its citizens — members of the Civil Disobedience Movement, artists, poets, actors, politicians, health workers, student leaders, public servants, workers, and journalists.

The military-appointed State Administration Council amended laws to punish anyone critical of its illegal coup or the military. International standards of freedoms — speech, expression, assembly, and association were “criminalised”.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma), reported as of 30 January 2023, the military killed 2901 people and arrested another 17,492 (of which 282 were children), with 13,719 people still in detention.

One hundred and forty three people have been sentenced to death and four have been executed since the military’s coup on 1 February 2021. Of those arrested, 176 were journalists and as many as 62 are still in jail or police detention.

The Committee to Protect Journalists ranks Myanmar as the world’s second-highest jailers of journalists. Fear of attacks, harassment, intimidation, censorship, detainment, and threats of assassination for their reporting has driven journalists and media workers underground or to try to reach safety in neighbouring countries.

Journalist Ye Htun Oo has been arrested, tortured, received death threats, and is now forced to seek safety outside of Myanmar. Ye Htun spoke to the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) of his torture, jailing and why he felt he had no choice, but to leave Myanmar for the insecurity of a journalist in exile.

They came for me in the morning
“I started as a journalist in 2007 but quit after two years because of the difficulty of working under the military. I continued to work, writing stories and poetry. In 2009 I restarted work as a freelance video and documentary maker.”

Ye Htu said making money from journalism in Myanmar had never been easy.

“I was lucky if I made 300,000 kyat a month (about NZ$460) — it was a lot of work, writing, editing, interviewing and filming.”

Ye Htun’s hands, fingers and thin frame twist and turn as he takes time to return to the darkness of the early morning when woken by police and military knocking on his front door.

“It was 2 am, the morning of 9 October 2021. We were all asleep. The knocking on the door was firm but gentle. I opened the door. Men from the police and the military’s special media investigation unit stood there — no uniforms. They’d come to arrest me.”

Ye Htun links the visit of the police and army to his friend’s arrest the day before.

“He had my number on his phone and when questioned told them I was a journalist. I hadn’t written anything for a while. The only reason they arrested me was because I was identified as a journalist — it was enough for them. The military unit has a list of journalists who they want to control, arrest, jail or contain.”

Ye Htun explains how easy it is for journalists to be arrested.

“When they arrest people…if they find a reference to a journalist or a phone number it’s enough to put you on their list.”

After the coup, Ye Htun continued to report.

“I was not being paid, moving around, staying in different places, following the protests. I was taking photos. I took a photo of citizens arresting police and it was published. This causes problems for the people in the photo. It also caused some people to regard me and journalists as informers — we were now in a hard place, not knowing what or who we could photograph. I decided to stop reporting and made the decision to move home. That’s when they came and arrested me.”

In the early morning before sunrise, the police and military removed Ye Htun from his home and family and took him to a detention cell inside a military barracks.

“They took all my equipment — computer, cameras, phone, and hard disks. The men who arrested and took me to the barracks left and others took over. Their tone changed. I was accused of being a PDF (People’s Defence Force militia).

“Ye Htun describes how the ‘politeness’ of his captors soon evaporated, and the danger soon became a brutal reality. They started to beat me with kicks, fists, sticks and rubber batons. They just kept beating me, no questions. I was put in foot chains — ankle braces.”

The beating of Ye Htun would continue for 25 days and the uncertainty and hurt still shows in his eyes, as he drags up the details he’s now determined to share.

“I was interrogated by an army captain who ordered me to show all my articles — there was little to show. They made me kneel on small stones and beat me on the body — never the head as they said, ‘they needed it intact for me to answer their questions’”.

Ye Htun explained it wasn’t just his assigned interrogators who beat or tortured him.

“Drunk soldiers came regularly to spit, insult or threaten me with their guns or knives.”

Scared, feared for his life
Ye Htun is quick to acknowledge he was scared and feared for his life.

“I was terrified. No one knew where I was. I knew my family would be worried. Everyone knows of people being arrested and then their dead, broken bodies, missing vital organs, being returned to grieving families.”

After 25 days of torture, Ye Htun was transferred to a police jail.

“They accused me of sending messages they had ‘faked’ and placed on my phone. I was sentenced to two years jail on 3rd November — I had no lawyer, no representative.”

Ye Htun spoke to political prisoners during his time in jail and concluded many were behind bars on false charges.

“Most political prisoners are there because of fake accusations. There’s no proper rule of law — the military has turned the whole country into a prison.”

Ye Htun served over a year and five months of his sentence and was one of six journalists released in an amnesty from Pyay Jail on 4 January 2023.

Not finished torturing
Any respite Ye Htun or his family received from his release was short-lived, as it became apparent the military was not yet finished torturing him. He was forced to sign a declaration that if he was rearrested he would be expected to serve his existing sentence plus any new ones, and he received death threats.

Soon after his release, the threats to his family were made.

“I was messaged on Facebook and on other social media apps. The messages said, ‘don’t go out alone…keep your family and wife away from us…’ their treats continued every two or three days.”

Ye Htun and his family have good cause to be concerned about the threats made against them. Several pro-military militias have openly declared on social media their intention against those opposed to the military’s control of the country.

A pro-military militia, Thwe Thauk Apwe (Blood Brothers), specialise in violent killings designed to terrorise.

Frontier Magazine reported in May 2022 that Thwe Thauk Apwe had murdered 14 members of the National League of Democracy political party in two weeks. The militia uses social media to boast of its gruesome killings and to threaten its targets — those opposed to military rule — PDF units, members of political parties, CDM members, independent media outlets and journalists.

Ye Htun said fears for his wife and children’s safety forced him to leave Myanmar.

“I couldn’t keep putting them at risk because I’m a journalist. I will continue to work, but I know I can’t do it in Myanmar until this military regime is removed.”

Air strikes target civilians – where’s the UN?
Award-winning documentary maker and artist, Sai Kyaw Khaing, dismayed at the lack of coverage by international and regional media on the impacts of Myanmar’s military aerial strikes on civilian targets, decided to make the arduous trip to the country’s northwest to find out.

In the two years since the military regime took illegal control of the country’s political infrastructure, Myanmar is now engaged in a brutal, countrywide civil war.

Civilian and political opposition to the military coup saw the formation of People Defence Force units under the banner of the National Unity Government established in April 2021 by members of Parliament elected at the 2020 elections and outlawed by the military after its coup.

Thousands of young people took up arms and joined PDF units, trained by Ethnic Armed Organisations, to defend villages and civilians and fight the military regime. The regime vastly outnumbered and outmuscled the PDFs and EAOs with its military hardware — tanks, heavy artillery, helicopter gunships and fighter jets.

Sai Kyaw contacted a number of international media outlets with his plans to travel deep inside the conflict zone to document how displaced people were coping with the airstrikes and burning of their villages and crops.

Sai Kyaw said it was telling that he has yet to receive a single response of interest from any of the media he approached.

“What’s happening in Myanmar is being ignored, unlike the conflict in Ukraine. Most of the international media, if they do report on Myanmar, want an ‘expert’ to front their stories, even better if it’s one of their own, a Westerner.”

Deadly strike impact
Sai Kyaw explains why what is happening on the ground needs to be explained — the impacts of the deadly airstrikes on the lives of unarmed villagers.

“My objective is to talk to local people. How can they plant or harvest their crops during the intense fighting? How can they educate their kids or get medical help?

“Thousands of houses, schools, hospitals, churches, temples, and mosques have been targeted and destroyed — how are the people managing to live?”

Sai Kyaw put up his own money to finance his trip to a neighbouring country where he then made contact with people prepared to help him get to northwestern Myanmar, which was under intense attacks from the military regime.

“It took four days by motorbike on unlit mountain dirt tracks that turned to deep mud when it rained. We also had to avoid numerous military checkpoints, military informers, and spies.”

Sai Kyaw said that after reaching his destination, meeting with villagers, and witnessing their response to the constant artillery and aerial bombardments, their resilience astounded him.

“These people rely on each other, when they’re bombed from their homes, people who still have a house rally around and offer shelter. They don’t have weapons to fight back, but they organise checkpoints managed by men and women.”

Sai Kyaw said being unable to predict when an airstrike would happen took its toll on villagers.

Clinics, schools bombed
“You don’t know when they’re going to attack — day or night — clinics, schools, places of worship — are bombed. These are not military targets — they don’t care who they kill.”

Sai Kyaw witnessed an aerial bombing and has the before and after film footage that shows the destruction. Rows of neat houses, complete with walls intact before the air strike are left after the attack with holes a car could drive through.

“The unpredictable and indiscriminate attacks mean villagers are unable to harvest their crops or plant next season’s rice paddies.”

Sai Kyaw is concerned that the lack of aid getting to the people in need of shelter, clothing, food, and medicine will cause a large-scale humanitarian crisis.

“There’s no sign of international aid getting to the people. If there’s a genuine desire to help the people, international aid groups can do it by making contact with local community groups. It seems some of these big international aid donors are reluctant to move from their city bases in case they upset the military’s SAC [State Administration Council].”

At the time of writing Sai Kyaw Khaing has yet to receive a reply from any of the international media he contacted.

It’s the economy stupid
A veteran Myanmar journalist, Kyaw Kyaw*, covered a wide range of stories for more than 15 years, including business, investment, and trade. He told IFJ he was concerned the ban on independent media, arrests of journalists, gags and access restrictions on sources meant many important stories went unreported.

“The military banning of independent media is a serious threat to our freedom of speech. The military-controlled state media can’t be relied on. It’s well documented, it’s mainly no news or fake news overseen by the military’s Department of Propaganda.”

Kyaw lists the stories that he explains are in critical need of being reported — the cost of consumer goods, the collapse of the local currency, impact on wages, lack of education and health care, brain drain as people flee the country, crops destroyed and unharvested and impact on next year’s yield.

Kyaw is quick to add details to his list.

“People can’t leave the country fast enough. There are more sellers than buyers of cars and houses. Crime is on the rise as workers’ real wages fall below the poverty line. Garment workers earned 4800 kyat, the minimum daily rate before the military’s coup. The kyat was around 1200 to the US dollar — about four dollars. Two years after the coup the kyat is around 2800 — workers’ daily wage has dropped to half, about US$2 a day.”

Kyaw Kyaw’s critique is compelling as he explains the cost of everyday consumer goods and the impact on households.

“Before the coup in 2021, rice cost a household, 32,000 kyat for around 45kg. It is now selling at 65,000 kyat and rising. Cooking oil sold at 3,000 kyat for 1.6kg now sells for over double, 8,000kyat.

“It’s the same with fish, chicken, fuel, and medicine – family planning implants have almost doubled in cost from 25,000 kyat to now selling at 45,000 kyat.”

Humanitarian crisis potential
Kyaw is dismayed that the media outside the country are not covering stories that have a huge impact on people’s daily struggle to feed and care for their families and have the real potential for a massive humanitarian crisis in the near future.

“The focus is on the revolution, tallies of dead soldiers, politics — all important, but journalists and local and international media need to report on the hidden costs of the military’s coup. Local media outlets need to find solutions to better cover these issues.”

Kyaw stresses international governments and institutions — ASEAN, UK, US, China, and India — need to stop talking and take real steps to remove and curb the military’s destruction of the country.

“In two years, they displaced over a million people, destroyed thousands of houses and religious buildings, attacked schools and hospitals — killing students and civilians — what is the UNSC waiting for?”

An independent think tank, the Institute for Strategy and Policy – Myanmar, and the UN agency for refugees confirm Kyaws Kyaw’s claims.The Institute for Strategy and Policy reports “at least 28,419 homes and buildings were torched or destroyed…in the aftermath of the coup between 1 February 2021, and 15 July 2022.”

The UN agency responsible for refugees, the UNHCR, estimates the number of displaced people in Myanmar is a staggering 1,574,400. Since the military coup and up to January 23, the number was 1,244,000 people displaced.

While the world’s media and governments focus their attention and military aid on Ukraine, Myanmar’s people continue to ask why their plight continues to be ignored.

Phil Thornton is a journalist and senior adviser to the International Federation of Journalists in Southeast Asia. This article was first published by the IFJ Asia-Pacific blog and is republished with the author’s permission. Thornton is also a contributor to Asia Pacific Report.

*Name has been changed as requested for security concerns.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz