As the world’s largest Indigenous education conference (WIPCE) closed last night in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, a shared sentiment emerged — despite arriving with different languages, lands, and traditions, attendees across the board felt the kotahitanga (unity).

The gathering — held in partnership with mana whenua Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, brought together more than 3000 participants from around the globe.

Many reflected that, despite being far from home, the event felt like one.

WIPCE officials also announced that Hawai’i would host the 2027 conference.

Throughout the week, the kaupapa — while centered on education — entailed themes of climate, health, language, politics, wellbeing, and more.

‘Being face-to-face is the native way’     Video: RNZ

Delegates travelled from across Moana-nui-a-Kiwa (Pacific Ocean), Canada, Hawai’i, Alaska, Australia and beyond to share their own stories, cultures, and aspirations for indigenous futures.

Among those reflecting on the gathering was renowned Kanaka Maoli educator, cultural practitioner and native rights activist Dr Noe-Noe Wong-Wilson.

She coordinated the 1999 conference, the fifth WIPCE, and has served on the council ever since.

Scale and spirit unique
Dr Wong-Wilson, a Hawai’ian culture educator, retired University of Hawaiʻi-Hilo and Hawaiʻi Community College educator, and former programme leader supporting Native Hawai’ian student success, now serves on the WIPCE International Council.

She believes the scale and spirit of WIPCE remains unique.

“Most of the WIPCE conferences have included over 3000 of our members that come from all over the world . . .  as far away as South, and our Sāmi cousins who come from Greenland, Iceland, and Norway,” Dr Wong-Wilson said.

Wong-Wilson described WIPCE as a multigenerational gathering of educators, scholars, and community knowledge holders.

“We always acknowledge our community knowledge holders, our chiefs, our grandmothers, our aunties, who hold the culture and the knowledge and the language in their communities,” Dr Wong-Wilson said.

“WIPCE is unique because it’s largely a gathering of indigenous people . . .  a lot different than a conference hosted strictly by a Western academic institution.”

She emphasised that WIPCE thrives on being in-person, especially in a climate where technology has largely replaced in-person gatherings.

Face-to-face communication
“Technology is the new way of communicating . . .  but there’s nothing that can replace the face-to-face communication and relationship building, and that’s what WIPCE offers,” she said.

“Being face to face with people is really the native way . . . I think we all know what it’s like when we live in villages and when we live in communities, and that’s what WIPCE is.

“We’re a large community of indigenous, native people who bring our ancestors with us and sit in the joy of being with each other.”

The group travelled to WIPCE to speak on topics of ‘awa biopiracy, and the experiences of Kanak scholars at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.

“My mana is being reignited in this space, and being around so many amazing scholars and people to learn from . . . there’s been so much aloha, reaffirming our hope and our healing. This is the type of space we really need,” Taitague-Laforga said.

She added that the power of events like WIPCE lay in seeing global relationships strengthened.

“Especially as a centre for all Indigenous communities globally to connect. Oftentimes . . . colonial tools work to divide us . . .

“it’s just been beautiful to be at a centre where everybody is here to connect and create that relationality and cultivate that,” Taitague-Laforga said.

Vā Pasifika Taunga from AUT Momo’e Fatialofa said it was special to soak up culture from Indigenous communities across the world — including First Nations Canadians, Aboriginal Australians, and Hawai’ians.

‘Sharing our stories’
“I think this kaupapa is important because it allows us to share our stories, to share what is similar between our different indigenous people. And how often can you say that you can be surrounded by over 3000 people from all over the world who are indigenous in their spaces?” Fatialofa said.

“We all face similar problems . . . especially in education,” Anderson said. “We enjoy being here with the rest of the nations, you know.”

“When you look around . . .  in culture, there are differences, but we all have a shared culture, it doesn’t matter where we come from.

“We still have a culture, we still have our language, we still have our knowledge, traditional knowledge, that connects us to our land.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The United States has denounced sanctions by Britain and allies — including New Zealand and Australia — against Israeli far-right ministers, saying they should focus instead on the Palestinian armed group Hamas.

New Zealand has banned two Israeli politicians from travelling to the country because of comments about the war in Gaza that Foreign Minister Winston Peters says “actively undermine peace and security”.

New Zealand joins Australia, Canada, the UK and Norway in imposing the sanctions on Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Peters said they were targeted towards two individuals, rather than the Israeli government.

“Our action today is not against the Israeli people, who suffered immeasurably on October 7 [2023] and who have continued to suffer through Hamas’ ongoing refusal to release all hostages.

“Nor is it designed to sanction the wider Israeli government.”

The two ministers were “using their leadership positions to actively undermine peace and security and remove prospects for a two-state solution”, Peters said.

‘Severely and deliberately undermined’ peace
“Ministers Smotrich and Ben-Gvir have severely and deliberately undermined that by personally advocating for the annexation of Palestinian land and the expansion of illegal settlements, while inciting violence and forced displacement.”

The sanctions were consistent with New Zealand’s approach to other foreign policy issues, he said.

“New Zealand has also targeted travel bans on politicians and military leaders advocating violence or undermining democracy in other countries in the past, including Russia, Belarus and Myanmar.”

New Zealand had been a long-standing supporter of a two-state solution, Peters said, which the international community was also overwhelmingly in favour of.

“New Zealand’s consistent and historic position has been that Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories are a violation of international law. Settlements and associated violence undermine the prospects for a viable two-state solution,” he said.

“The crisis in Gaza has made returning to a meaningful political process all the more urgent. New Zealand will continue to advocate for an end to the current conflict and an urgent restart of the Middle East Peace Process.”

‘Outrageous’, says Israel
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said the move was “outrageous” and the government would hold a special meeting early next week to decide how to respond to the “unacceptable decision”.

His comments were made while attending the inauguration of a new Israeli settlement on Palestinian land.

Peters is currently in Europe for the sixth Pacific-France Summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron in Nice.

US State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters: “We find that extremely unhelpful. It will do nothing to get us closer to a ceasefire in Gaza.”

Britain, Canada, Norway, New Zealand and Australia “should focus on the real culprit, which is Hamas”, she said of the sanctions.

“We remain concerned about any step that would further isolate Israel from the international community.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Norway is stopping the first licensing round for deep sea mining in Arctic waters — and Greenpeace Aotearoa says this is putting pressure on the Luxon government to follow suit.

“This move by Norway to stop the seabed mining in its tracks is a historic win for ocean protection and for the growing movement opposed to the damaging new extractive industry,” said Greenpeace spokesperson Juan Parada.

“This puts the spotlight firmly on the Luxon government to do the same.”

In January 2024, the Norwegian government opened its Arctic waters to deep sea mining across an area equivalent to the size of Italy, but after resistance grew across civil society and the fishing industry, the government has agreed to stop the first licensing round for at least the whole of 2025.

“This decision by Norway puts even more pressure on the Luxon government not to be the first in the world to allow commercial seabed mining to take place in its waters,” Parada said.

“Millions of people across the world are now calling on governments to resist the dire threat of seabed mining to safeguard oceans worldwide and one by one they are listening.

“The Luxon government needs to read the room, listen to the growing opposition and put an end to the Australian-owned mining company Trans-Tasman Resources’ destructive plans to mine the South Taranaki Bight.” says Parada.

Last week, Greenpeace activists, along with representatives of Taranaki iwi Ngāti Ruanui, disrupted the annual general meeting of Manuka Resources, the owners of TTR.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

COMMENT: By Paul Claesson in Stockholm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Owen Wilkes, an internationally renowned peace researcher and Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) founder, died in 2005, aged 65 (see my obituary in Watchdog 109, August 2005). And yet, 16 years later, I’m still learning more about him and gaining insights into his life and character.

In late 2020 I was contacted, out of the blue, by an octogenarian Kiwi expat in Oslo, who had been a good friend of Owen’s in Scandinavia in the 1970s and 1980s and then for most of the rest of Owen’s life.

In 1978, I and my then partner (Christine Bird, a fellow CAFCINZ founder and first chairperson of CAFCA) accompanied Owen on a “spy trip” through Norway’s northernmost province, the one bordering the former Soviet Union, which gave me my first glimpse of the sort of domes with which I’ve become so familiar at the Waihopai spy base during the last 30 plus years.

We met this expat Kiwi while in Oslo. Although we were strangers, he immediately recognised us as New Zealanders the second we stepped off the train at his station.

Why? Because of the distinctive shabbiness of our dress. I hadn’t heard from him in decades. In 2020, he went to the trouble of contacting an NZ national news website to get my email address.

He told me that he had a small collection of Owen’s letters and other material about him, and as he was decluttering and couldn’t think of any Scandinavian home for them, would I like them?

I was happy to do so. Reading them brought back vivid memories from more than 40 years ago, none more so than in connection with that “spy trip”.

Thrived in Scandinavia
Owen thrived in Scandinavia, and particularly loved his 18 months in Norway, paying Norwegians the highest accolade of being “good jokers”. All up, he lived six years in Scandinavia, most of it in Sweden, where he worked for the world-famous Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

He applied his unique talents to researching in both countries e.g., he identified the entire security police staff by the simple expedient of ringing every block of particular extension numbers.

In 1978, Christine Bird and I did our Big OE, part of which included crossing the former Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian Express from the Pacific coast and staying with Owen in his Stockholm apartment.

In this most sophisticated of northern European cities, he still dressed and acted like The Wild Man of Borneo (when I inquired about toilet paper, he told me that he used the phonebook). It was quite a sight to visit the SIPRI office full of oh, so proper Swedes and there was Owen working away at his desk, naked except for shorts.

We met up with him for a reason, which was to accompany him on a “spy” trip through Norway’s northernmost Finnmark province, which was chokka with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) military bases and lots of Waihopai-like spy bases, the first time I ever saw those distinctive domes.

Norway was then one of only two NATO members with a land border with the Soviet Union (the other being Turkey).

Mad Norwegian adventure
Off we went, the three of us, on this mad adventure, travelling by boat, train, bus and hitchhiking. We slept in a tent wherever we could pitch it.

Bird and I went by bus right up to the Soviet border; Owen got the deeply suspicious driver to drop off him beforehand so that he could walk up and check out a spy base in the border zone (photography was strictly forbidden near any of these bases, even at Oslo Airport, because it was also an Air Force base). From memory, he told the bus driver that he was a bird watcher (he had his ever-present binoculars to prove it).

He told us that if he hadn’t rejoined us within a couple of days, it would mean that he had been arrested and to ring the office in Oslo to let them know. Right on time he turned up.

We duly delivered the rolls of film back to the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO) and they were used in a book co-authored by Owen and Nils Petter Gleditsch, the PRIO Director. The book, Uncle Sam’s Rabbits (a pun on the rabbit ear aerials used at some of the listening post spy bases) caused such a sensation in Norway that both authors were charged, tried, convicted and fined for offences under the Official Secrets Act.

Much more excitement was to come, not long after, in Sweden. Security agents swooped on Owen as he was returning from a bike trip around islands between Sweden and Finland, he was held incommunicado for several days amid sensational headlines about a Soviet spy being arrested (this was the sort of stuff that gave his poor old Mum palpitations back in Christchurch).

He was eventually released and charged with offences under Sweden’s Official Secrets Act (after his death, NZ media coverage mistakenly said that he was convicted of espionage offences. That means spying for a foreign country. He wasn’t charged with any such offence, let alone convicted).

Forded Arctic river in shorts to covertly enter Soviet Union
This was at the height of the Cold War, when neutral Sweden was being particularly paranoid about Soviet spies (not helped when a Soviet Whiskey class submarine got embarrassingly stuck in Stockholm Harbour, the famous “Whiskey On The Rocks” episode).

Owen’s trial was very high profile, attracting international media attention. At first, he was convicted and sentenced to six months’ prison. He never served a day of that, because he appealed, and the sentence was suspended but he was fined heavily and ordered expelled from Sweden for 10 years (he used to joke that he should have appealed for it to be increased to 20 years).

The 2020 package of material from Oslo added one vital detail I didn’t know about that “spy trip” we did with him. The Kiwi expat wrote to a work mate of Owen’s, after his death: “He once even crossed the Norwegian-Soviet border in the high north, wading across an icy river in his shorts and was there several hours – only a few people know about this.

It doesn’t bear thinking about what could have happened to him, or so-called international relations, if he’d been jumped on by the vodka-sodden Soviet frontier guards. As unshaven as Owen. He would have managed though …

No wonder that bus driver was so suspicious of him. There is great irony in the fact that both the Norwegian and Swedish security agencies suspected Owen of being some sort of a Soviet spy and both prosecuted him; yet if he’d been caught on his covert visit to the Soviet Union, he would have doubtless been presented to the world as a Western spy.

A 1981 letter that Owen wrote to his Oslo mate shed some light on his arrest and detention for several days by the Swedish Security Service (SAPO).

“Overall, it wasn’t such bad fun. I had a clear conscience all along and I wasn’t scared that SAPO would try and plant evidence or anything like that… So, I slept well at night, found the interrogations intellectually stimulating, read several novels. Getting out was fun too…”

I can personally testify as to how much Owen enjoyed being locked up. We were among a group of people arrested inside the US military transport base at Christchurch Airport during a 1988 protest (the base is still there). This is from my 2005 Watchdog obituary of Owen, cited above:

“It was a weekend, so we were bailed after a few hours to appear later in the week”.

“But that didn’t suit Owen, he had things to do and didn’t want to be mucking around with inconvenient court appearances. So, he refused bail and opted to stay locked up for 24 hours so that the cops had to produce him at the next day’s court hearing (which was more convenient for him), where he duly got bail.

“He told me that he’d found some old Reader’s Digests in the cells and had had a wonderful uninterrupted time reading their Rightwing conspiracy theories about how the KGB was behind the 1981 assassination attempt on Pope John Paul 11. In the meantime, I was left to deal with his then partner, who was frantic about how come he’d ended up in custody, as that hadn’t been part of their South Island holiday plans. In the end, we fought the good fight in court, were convicted and got a small fine each”.

Getting to read his Swedish security file
A letter to his Oslo mate at the turn of the century says that he learned that Swedish police files on him would be among those now available to the people who were the subjects of them. He wrote, from New Zealand, asking for access to their files on him from 1978-81.

He got a reply saying he could have access to 1025 pages and that he had two months to do so. Owen had been planning a Scandinavian trip with his partner, May Bass, and this was the icing on the cake for him (“she is going to find something else to do while I am poring through the archives in Stockholm”).

When I last saw Owen, in 2002, he told that me that the file showed that the Swedish authorities were absolutely convinced that he was a Soviet spy and there was circumstantial evidence of which he had been unaware – for instance, he had been monitoring a whole lot of radio frequencies broadcasting from the Soviet Union, and in the case of one, he had apparently stumbled onto the means of communication between the KGB (former Soviet spy agency) and their agent in Sweden.

He had no idea but this reinforced the Swedish spooks’ idea that he was a Soviet spy, rather than an insatiably curious peace researcher.

By contrast, to this day, the NZ Security Intelligence Service has refused to release anything but a fraction of its file on him (see my “Owen Wilkes’ SIS File. A bit more feleased, a decade after first smidgen”, in Watchdog 150, April 2019).

The SIS says it holds six volumes on Owen. It still deems the great majority of that too sensitive to be released, even to his one remaining blood relative – his younger brother.

In 1982, after six years of high drama in Scandinavia, he returned home in a blaze of publicity and CAFCINZ (as CAFCA was then) sent him around the country on an extremely successful speaking tour.

Christchurch academic, Professor Bill Willmott, nominated him for the 1982 Nobel Peace Prize (funnily enough, he didn’t win it. It was never likely that the Scandinavians would ever award their homegrown prize to a peace activist who had been convicted for “spying” on them).

A copy of Willmott’s nomination letter is among the material I was sent. After his involuntary return, Owen never lived overseas again, but he continued to be of ongoing interest to Scandinavian media.

A 1983 Norwegian article reported on Owen from where he was living in the Karamea district. It was titled: “’Spy’ yesterday, farmer today”.

Extreme adventurer, renouncing Peace Movement
Owen wasn’t a big fan of Sweden but he absolutely loved Norway. It gave him full scope for the extreme adventures that he loved, whether on foot, in the water, on skis or on a bike.

His letters describing some of his adventures are wonderful examples of travel writing, although not for the fainthearted reader. This is his description of what happened when he boarded a coastal ferry after one such jaunt through days of unrelenting rain:

“.. I noticed the people were looking rather strangely at me, which I assumed was just because of the way I went squilch-squelch when I walked, and the way a little rivulet would wend its way out from under my chair when I sat down. Then I chanced to look in a mirror, and discovered that my skin had gone all soft and wrinkly and puffy, so that I looked like a cadaver that had been simmered in caustic soda solution”.

He would have fitted right in to any movie about the zombie apocalypse.

His letters shed light on various fascinating aspects of his life and personality. In the 1990s he basically and publicly renounced the Peace Movement (I refer you to my 2005 Watchdog obituary, cited above. See the subheadings “Leaving the Peace Movement” and “Writer of crank letters”). A 1993 letter to his Oslo mate gives a small taste of this.

It lists his disagreements with “Greenpeas [not a typo. MH] …on quite a few issues. Some of their campaigns are just great, but some of them are pretty bloody stupid, I reckon. And it is only recently that they’ve started going screwy” (he then details six areas of disagreement).

“Grumble, grumble, it’s no wonder I am getting offside with the peace movement around these parts, is it… Anyway, I am sort of getting out of the peace movement”.

Another 1993 letter to Oslo (the only handwritten one) is a fascinating, hilarious and white-knuckle account of how – after the unexpected death of his father in Christchurch – he and his brother tried to get their bedridden mother moved by small plane from Christchurch to the brother’s district of Karamea.

A classic Canterbury norwester put paid to that and they had to land at a rural airstrip (after the sheep had been chased off it). The journey had to be finished by ambulance and took 26 hours. Owen’s parents died within a few months of each other, in 1993. I knew both of them and Becky and I attended both funerals.

Owen was a depressive, which played a role in his 2005 suicide. That same 1993 handwritten letter concluded with this: “There’s an election coming up in 3 weeks, but I feel quite detached. Basically, I think we’re all totally doomed + the civilisation is into its final orgy of environmental destruction before the end. Rather than trying to improve the future by changing the present, I plan on documenting the past, just in case civilisation is re-established in some distant future + its people are in a mood to learn from our past. Hence my archaeology. It’s a choice between archaeology or alcoholism, I reckon”.

Pleasure and sadness
Owen Wilkes was a fascinating and simultaneously infuriating man. He has been dead for 16 years and this quite unexpected package of material goes back more than 40 years. But that passage only reinforces for me what a loss he is, both to the progressive movement nationally and globally, but also as a person, an indomitable adventurer, and as a friend and colleague.

It was with both pleasure and sadness that I read through this material. It brought back so many memories.

As for the Oslo expat, he and I went on to have an extensive correspondence in late 2020 and on into 2021. And not just about Owen but about many other people and topics. He has permanently lived outside NZ since the 1960s but we still have people in common.

For example, in 1960s Christchurch he was involved with the Monthly Review and knew Wolfgang Rosenberg. I sent him my Watchdog obituary of Wolf (114, May 2007). The upshot of all this was that he insisted on sending CAFCA a donation.

Thank you, Owen, you’re the gift that keeps on giving.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Two foreign nationals have lost their lives in the Solomon Islands during a bomb blast last night at their home in Tasahe, West Honiara.

Police said the two, an Australian and a British citizen, were working for a Norwegian aid agency conducting a survey on unexploded ordnance, RNZ News reports.

The agency, Norwegian Peoples Aid, has named them as Trent Lee and Stephen Atkinson.

READ MORE: Australian and Briton killed in Solomon Islands bomb blast

Inspector Clifford Tunuki said police were working overnight to clear the site of the explosion which went off between 7.30pm and 8pm.

Witnesses said the sound of the blast ranged through nearby homes.

Some compared the sound of the blast to a vehicle tyre bursting.

Following the blast, people rushed to the scene where they discovered the men badly injured.

Ambulance called
An ambulance was immediately called to bring the men to the National Referral Hospital (NRH).

Reports said one of the men died at the scene while the other was confirmed dead later at the hospital.

Last night the area around the home was sealed off as police began investigating the incident.

A statement issued by the Police Media Unit last night said officers of the Royal Solomon Islands Police Force (RSIPF) Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team and Forensics Department were at the scene following the fatal bomb blast.

The statement said medical authorities at NRH had confirmed last night that the two foreign nationals had died as a result of the blast.

The two expats were working for the Norwegian non-government organisation, Norwegian Peoples Aid, that is conducting a non-technical survey on the contamination of Unexploded Ordnances (UXOs) in Solomon Islands, the police media statement said.

The US State Department funds the project.

Police at the scene
Inspector Tunuki said the police had received a report on the incident yesterday evening and were at the scene of the tragic incident.

EOD officers have rendered the scene safe before the RSIPF Forensics and other investigators were able to access the scene to find out what happened, he added.

“We call on members of the public in the Tasahe area to please stay well away from the area of the incident and allow RSIPF officers to do their work as we investigate this tragic incident,” Inspector Tunuki said.

He also confirmed that none of the RSIPF EOD officers were at the scene when the bomb blast happened, despite the fact that they work together with the project.

He explained the survey team usually went out to confirm the location of the UXOs following reports from the communities and the information was relayed to them.

“We determine what to do with the UXOs after the survey has located them,” Inspector Tunuki explained.

On behalf of the RSIPF, Inspector Tunuki conveyed his sincere condolences to family and relatives of those two foreign nationals who had died.

Many locals expressed shock about the news last night.

Social media was flooded with message of condolences and sympathy to the families of the dead men.

Moffat Mamu is a Solomon Star news reporter.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Norway has asked Israel to “explain” its unlawful capture of the Norwegian-flagged ship Al Awda that last month tried to breach the Gaza Strip’s 10-year maritime blockade.

The international Freedom Flotilla was in a bid to deliver medical supplies to Palestinians in the coastal enclave.

“We have asked the Israeli authorities to clarify the circumstances around the seizure of the vessel and the legal basis for the intervention,” said a Norwegian Foreign Ministry spokesman.

READ MORE: Israel’s attack on the Gaza Flotilla – looking back a year later 

“While this is certainly far more than the New Zealand government’s response (which appears to be nothing at all, since Kiwi Mike Treen was bashed and arrested in the same attack), the Freedom Flotilla’s Norwegian campaign is demanding their government takes a stand,” said the NZ humanitarian group Kia Ora Gaza.

The full statement from the Ship to Gaza Norway human rights group yesterday said:

“When will Norway protest against hijacking and extensive violence against people on board?

“On July 29, the Norwegian former fishing vessel Kårstein [renamed Al Awda] was hijacked in international waters, with extensive violence by Israeli navy soldiers.

“For more than a week, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ follow-up of the case has limited itself to asking Israeli authorities to ‘clarify the course of events’ and say why they ‘encroached on the vessel’.

“No indication of protest.

“Now Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Søreide has continued this game. After talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu she said that ‘we asked the Israeli authorities for an explanation of why the ship was captured, the course of events and the use of power’.

“Still no indication of protest.

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ gathering of facts in the case limits itself to the embassy personnel’s talks with five Norwegian citizens in Israeli prison the day after the hijacking. After they were deported and able to speak freely, they have not been contacted by the MFA.

“There were people from 16 nations on board. Their version has not been obtained. The ship’s highly recognised doctor, who delivered a shocking report on Saturday, has not been contacted.

No legal basis for hijacking, violence
“However, in the talks with the five Norwegian citizens in prison, there were revealed more than enough [grounds] to justify a strong protest. The MFA knows that our action was non-violence based and that the ship had a load of desperately needed medical equipment.

“Independent of possible differences in view on international law, there is of course no legal basis for hijacking a ship in international waters by knocking out peaceful, non-violent people and using heavy violence against them.

“Nor is there any legal basis for stealing everything of valuables and clothing. From Mikkel Grüner, a member of Bergen City Council, the soldiers stole everything except for the ship’s Norwegian flag, which they had trampled on.

“The Foreign Minister obviously does not know that the soldiers have taken all the belongings of the people on board.

Lies and nonsense
“Israel has always lied about how they use military power. Every time they say that the operation has been done without violence, but we have documented through video footage that it is a lie.

“This time, violence was worse than ever [since the Israeli commando attack that killed 10 civilians on the Mavi Marmara-led flotilla in 2010] and Israel’s ambassador continues with the same nonsense.

“What Israel does in this case is of course just a pale shadow of what they do to the Palestinians, including daily attacks on the fishermen in Gaza. A pleasant chat with those responsible for violence, terror and mass murder will lead to nothing except for the game to continue.

“Since governments do nothing that may stop this, people with conscience and knowledge must do something. That is why we sailed to Gaza.

“The result is international effects that show that it is ordinary people’s action, pressure and protest that can eventually produce results.”

Asia Pacific Report has a content sharing arrangement with Kia Ora Gaza.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz