Former Fiji prime minister Voreqe Bainimarama says the country’s intervention at the International Court of Justice over Israel’s occupation of Palestine betrays Fiji’s legacy as peacekeepers.

Paul Reichler, an attorney representing Palestine at the ICJ revealed this week that Fiji and the United States were the only nations to defend Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Fifty countries and three international organisations are calling for self-determination and an end to the Israeli military occupation which has lasted more than half a century.

Bainimarama said Fiji’s stance “insults the intelligence of every Fijian”.

The former prime minister and military commander said that that position undid Fiji’s long-standing commitment to neutrality, peacekeeping, and the principles of self-determination and decolonisation.

“The coalition government’s claim that the occupation of foreign territory by Israel is legal — an argument not even advanced by Israel itself — reveals a disturbing truth that Fiji’s voice to the world is hostage to a demented few who are hellbent on destroying our national reputation,” he said in a statement today.

‘Contradicts our stance on independence’
“This action contradicts our firm stance on the rights to independence and statehood, rights we have championed for our Pacific brothers and for all colonial peoples.

He said Fiji has stood with Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Kiribati, and others in their pursuit of independence.

“We must ask ourselves: with what credibility will we support the independence of territories like New Caledonia and French Polynesia? We must not be selective in our support for statehood and independence.

“Our actions today will define our legacy and our ability to lead in the Pacific and beyond.

“The world should know that the vast majority of Fijians stand on the side of peace. That is our national character and that is the spirit in which we offer our service on the frontlines of conflict zones around the world.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A View from Afar – In this podcast, political scientist Paul Buchanan and Selwyn Manning raise the question: If escalation of the Russian war against Ukraine will occur should NATO or European Union nations intervene to protect Ukraine, who or what can assist in bringing this war to a close?

For many of us around the world, Russia’s war against Ukraine raises a philosophical dilemma. Is defence of the vulnerable the correct pathway toward reestablishing peace?

And specifically, Defence… what should it look like?

Do we, as members of an international community, stand by and allow innocent people to be murdered in the name of a geopolitical doctrine or ambition? Or, do we truly have a responsibility to protect the vulnerable?

In last week’s episode we explored how Russia had advanced ahead of NATO and Europe in matters of deterrence. We also canvassed the Responsibility to Protect principles.

Today, we deep dive into how concerned nations may be able to come to Ukraine’s aid, and under what circumstances could this be possible, and how will such resolutions be defined.

You can comment on this debate by clicking on one of these social media channels and interacting in the social media’s comment area. Here are the links:

• Facebook.com/selwyn.manning
• Youtube
• Twitter.com/Selwyn_Manning

If you miss the LIVE Episode, you can see it as video-on-demand, and earlier episodes too, by checking out EveningReport.nz or, subscribe to the Evening Report podcast here.

The MIL Network’s podcast A View from Afar was Nominated as a Top  Defence Security Podcast by Threat.Technology – a London-based cyber security news publication.

Threat.Technology placed A View from Afar at 9th in its 20 Best Defence Security Podcasts of 2021 category. You can follow A View from Afar via our affiliate syndicators.

The latest members of New Zealand’s Defence Force and police contingent have arrived in Honiara after days of unrest in the Solomon Islands capital.

They are part of a regional peacekeeping force that also includes teams from Australia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji.

Two flights landed in Honiara yesterday afternoon from Ōhakea and Auckland Air Force bases.

They have been sent in response to a request for support from the Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare.

The Air Force Boeing 757 and a Hercules transported Defence Force and police personnel, vehicles and other equipment.

An advance party of New Zealand Defence Force and police personnel arrived in Honiara on Thursday — a week after violent rioting rocked the city for days leaving Chinatown and parts of eastern Honiara severely damaged.

Earlier this week Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta said the personnel would maintain peace rather than get involved in domestic politics.

She said a looming vote of no-confidence in Sogavare could trigger more violence.

The New Zealand deployment is expected to be in the Solomon Islands for up to a month.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Papua New Guinea’s deployment of 37 police and Correctional Services staff to Solomon Islands on Friday was done on the back of a regional police-to-police engagement arrangement to help stem the civil unrest in Honiara.

Police Commissioner David Manning, who returned to Port Moresby from Honiaria on Friday evening on a chartered Tropicair plane, said he met his Solomon Islands counterpart Mostyn Mangau.

The first thing the PNG contingent did was to protect some of the state assets such as Henderson International Airport and Parliament House.

Manning said a further commitment was known to Commissioner Mangau and Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare to increase manpower if the situation worsened.

He said that the members of the PNG contingent would work side by side and under Commissioner Mangau’s orders.

He said on the meeting with Mangau that the situation was of great concern for them given the manpower shortage in Solomon Islands.

PNG’s intervention was not just timely but was critical to them to contain the situation.

Manning said according to the brief, most of the shops in Chinatown were looted and burnt down, including the PNG-owned BSP building in Honiara.

He said an aerial view of the capital indicated that the city streets were empty with no movement of people.

He said PNG’s intervention was part of PNG’s interest in helping provide regional security.

Fiji providing 50 troops
The Fiji Times reports that Fiji will today deploy a 50 troops to Solomon Islands.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

It is clear and proper that New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade is closely monitoring a concerning situation of deteriorating violence in West Papua.

It is also apparent that groups who have long monitored the security situation in West Papua have contacted the New Zealand Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, urging her to speak up against the violence and human rights abuses in the Indonesian-controlled state. I believe the Prime Minister should. Here’s why.

When considering the history of West Papua – the increasing violence; the enduring wish of its peoples for self-determination; the arrests on treason charges of those who seek a pathway toward independence; the intensifying concerns of its immediate neighbours Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, and the states that make up the Melanesian Spearhead Group – it would be a brave but significant step should New Zealand also add its considerable weight behind a call for a multilateral-led resolution to the West Papua conflict.

New Zealand’s reputation as an honest-broker on global human rights issues, and the Prime Minister’s significant reputation for being able to identify common-ground, and, map out a way forward for parties with disparate interests, would provide significant leverage and resolution to a conflict that is at risk of becoming a human catastrophe.

Also, New Zealand is right, smack, in the middle of the Asia Pacific region. Despite Australia’s historical interests in Melanesia, this is New Zealand’s patch as well. Human rights abuses, conflicts, disorder within our region will impact on New Zealand in the future as they have in the past.

Take the Solomon Islands conflict in the early 2000s. The Melanesian state was descending into civil war. In 2003, I was in Townsville, at an Australian airforce base when the leaders of Melanesian and Polynesian states (including New Zealand’s Helen Clark and Australia’s John Howard) signed a non-aggression pact and sent armed forces to the Solomon Islands to help reestablish peace and progress.

The operation became known as RAMSI (Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands).

Under RAMSI, once order was restored in the Solomon Islands, the countries of this region helped the once chaotic state to establish good governance and government operations, and helped to establish a thriving civil society.

The merits of RAMSI can be seen today in how the Solomon Islands now functions as a progressing state and valuable member of the Pacific Islands Forum.

Regarding West Papua, New Zealand, and indeed the other nations of the region, ought not to permit a repeat of the violence that took hold of East Timor in 1999.

For years those advocating self-determination in East Timor were persecuted and killed by forces and militia loyal to Indonesia’s interests. In 1999 the crisis descended into massacre. In the end, it was estimated over 100,000 people were butchered in an unnecessary and preventable street-conflict.

At the time in 1999, New Zealand was hosting APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Co-Operation) leader’s summit. It was the end of the National Party’s run of government and Jenny Shipley was the prime minister. The government was determined to keep East Timor and its troubles off the APEC agenda. It refused to allow the massacre to be discussed at formal APEC meetings, that is, until the United States’ then president Bill Clinton and Japan’s then prime minister Keizō Obuchi demanded that a special meeting to discuss a multilateral response to the East Timor crisis be held.

While thousands of people were being massacred on the streets of East Timor’s capital, Dili, the leaders of APEC’s nations forged a consensus that became a pathway to peace.

Obuchi’s message to his Indonesian counterpart Habibie was as follows: “East Timor remains in a very difficult situation. But Japan has a good relationship with Indonesia. And Japan will continue to encourage Indonesia to take measures to bring East Timor back to a state of peace.”

He went further with diplo-speak akin to: ‘We are your friend Habibie, you know we are your friend. Afterall we provide you with $2 billion US in humanitarian aid [60 percent of the annual total]. We do not want to take that away from you, to do so will cause hardship throughout Asia, and only bring retaliatory consequences to all. So allow the international peacekeepers in to help you bring about peace. To do so is not an embarrassment. It is recognising the gesture of a friend. And to do so will prevent Japan from having to withdraw its aid to the people of Indonesia.” (ref. Scoop, Selwyn Manning, 1999)

The gesture was significant and began a process that led to East Timor becoming the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste – a self-determining independent state.

I argue here, that there is no need for Asia Pacific’s leaders to sit back and dispassionately observe a disturbing escalation of violence in West Papua.

Timor-Leste’s experience, as does RAMSI – the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands – provide examples of how leaders of a region, who have the willpower, can and do bring warring parties back from the brink of atrocity.

Jacinda Ardern has, for good reasons, obvious diplomatic credentials. She is seen as an honest broker on the world stage. A new generation leader. She is reacquainting New Zealand to a foreign policy that we were once proud of, that is as an independent Pacific Island state. The realignment is something to celebrate. With regard to West Papua, there is an opportunity to use it, and to do good for the people there, who are experiencing persecution and death for their ethnicity and for their political views.

It need not be so.

By Rahul Bhattarai

Military forces on peacekeeping duties often face dilemmas that are difficult to resolve, says a retired colonel who is now an education consultant.

Colonel Richard Hall, who retired from the British Army after 25 years’ service, peacekeeping roles in several countries, and led a New Zealand mission to Afghanistan in 2008/9, told an audience at Auckland University of Technology he had faced a challenge when a local tribal chief asked for security for young schoolchildren.

The chief was running a small school where he was teaching young children, but he was getting death threats from the Taliban who wanted him to stop teaching.

READ MORE: 10 years, eight lives, and $300 in Bamiyan – was New Zealand’s time in Afghanistan worth it?

Colonel Hall had to decline the request.

“Sadly, I couldn’t,” he said.

-Partners-

This kind of dilemma was rather common for military officers, especially when they were engaged in an operation with limited military resources or mandate that did not allow such activity, said Hall.

He was speaking at a public event organised by the Auckland branch of the United Nations Association of New Zealand on the theme “peacekeeping and the use of force”.

Former Colonel Richard Hall speaking on the dilemmas of peacekeeping. Image: David Robie/PMC

‘Victors’ peace’
Hall said World War 2 was a “victors’ peace” and the United Nations Charter was written by the Allies who had won the war – China, France, United Kingdom, United States and the Soviet Union were the principal authors.

They “preserved” their power through enabling a veto in the Security Council. That gave them the ability to influence their “common interest”.

“It wasn’t long before the political divide between the East and West came out,” he said.

This was when the permanent members were often in complete disagreement with each other.

The common interest became difficult, and often it led to the creation of “mandates” by the UN.

“Those [mandates] were a compromise, they were weakly worded to avoid a veto,” Hall said.

This was a major concern as it caused lots of difficulties for the people on the ground, including confusion over the role of UN peacekeeping force.

The public generally confuse the UN’s role with providing security to the host country, but that is incorrect.

Peacekeeping job
The key aspect of peacekeeping operation was the UN being totally impartial.

It was not about taking sides – except for two exceptions; the Korean War in 1950 and the war against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The UN tried to bring various sides of a conflict together through a political process to reach a peace agreement – while the military worked in the background facilitating the process.

UN Charter’s chapter six is devoted to the peaceful settlements of disputes.

“Political negotiation between warring parties were the preeminent way of resolving conflicts”, Hall said.

Some roles for the military in peacekeeping tended to be completely unarmed or lightly armed troops doing a “couple of things”.

Hall said the UN military might be observers ensuring there was going to be a ceasefire agreement, or they might be creating a buffer zone between warring factions to prevent the conflict reigniting due to breach of a ceasefire.

Health impact
UN peacekeeping soldiers also suffered seriously from post-traumatic stress disorder as they were not allowed to intervene.

According to the United Nations (UN) Principles of Peacekeeping, there are three basic principles that set UN peacekeeping operations apart as a tool for maintaining international peace and security – consent of the parties, impartiality and non-use of force except in self-defence, and defence of the mandate.

UN peacekeeping forces were not allowed to engage in any kind of offensive, unless it is for self-defence which created a huge problem for their mental well-being, Hall said.

Soldiers witness “killing and raping” and they could not do anything about it and that caused more psychological distress.

Hall said that if the public did not support the mission, that was demoralising for soldiers.

“They feel they have been committed to an operation and there is no political, moral support from the government of the day and also the general population,” he said.

Referring to the Vietnam War and how much New Zealand soldiers had gone through, “you [the public] let down those soldiers very, very badly”.

“It wasn’t their fault that they were there, they were filling a mandate,” he added.

Hall has been decorated with the New Zealand Order of Merit and has had a distinguished military career with service in Bosnia, Cyprus, Kosovo, Middle East and Northern Ireland as well as Afghanistan.

He was seconded to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office to establish regional peacekeeping centres in Africa, working extensively with local military, politicians and NGOs.

Hall’s book A Long Road to Progress: Dispatches from a Kiwi Commander in Afghanistan is an autobiographical account.

Currently he is a senior educational consultant in the deputy vice-chancellor’s office at Auckland University of Technology.

Afghan women under the watchful eye of a soldier. Image: Richard Hall

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

By Dian Septiari in Jakarta

Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi is set to lobby more countries to vote for her country in its campaign for a non-permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council ahead of the vote that will take place next week.

Retno said she would head for New York again on Sunday, a few days before voting day on June 8.

“On the 4th [Monday] there will a diplomatic reception at the United Nations headquarters, while on the 5th, 6th and the 7th I still have the chance for more lobbying before voting day,” she told reporters on the sidelines of an iftar (breaking-of-the-fast) event at the Foreign Ministry on Monday.

In the last two weeks, Retno has visited New York, Guyana, Argentina and Peru and attended forums, where she also talked about Indonesia’s campaign for the seat.

Retno expressed her optimism, counting on Indonesia’s track record and contributions to world’s peace.

“Hopefully with all the contributions well-documented, it will become the reason why the countries vote for Indonesia,” she said.

-Partners-

She said if Indonesia gained the seat, it would prioritise contributions to peace, including in peace-keeping operations, realising the Sustainable Development Goals and pushing for more cooperation to solve transnational organised crime.

• Dian Septiari is a Jakarta Post journalist.

More Indonesia stories

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz