A new Asia Pacific nonprofit group has taken up the role of publishing the independent Pacific Journalism Review and other research and publication ventures.

The launch of the Asia Pacific Media Network | Te Koakoa Inc. (APMN) has ensured the viability of the New Zealand-based 28-year-old journal that was founded at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1994.

The journal has a focus on Asia Pacific, Australian and New Zealand media research but also publishes widely on global issues.

Chair Dr Heather Devere says the members of the network — mostly in Australia, Fiji and New Zealand — aim to “show support and work for the benefit of First Nations and other communities in Aotearoa and the Asia-Pacific region”.

But, adds Dr Devere, an author and retired director of research practice at the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (NCPACS): “The first and most urgent aim is to enable the continued publication of the non-profit media research journal Pacific Journalism Review”.

The journal has already produced two double editions since becoming independent of its last host, Auckland University of Technology, which had followed the University of the South Pacific as publisher.

Professor David Robie, founding editor of the journal and who retired as AUT’s Pacific Media Centre (PMC) director in 2020, says he is “delighted” with this development and thanked colleagues for their support for the vision.

After organising the establishment of the APMN, he is now deputy chair and is looking for new projects. Dr Robie is also country representative of the Manila-based Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC) and looks to strengthen the Asian aspects of APMN’s research.

Dr Philip Cass, who succeeded Dr Robie as PJR editor, says APMN is intended to provide a focal point for academics and practitioners with a strong interest in the region and “a desire to use their expertise to contribute to the Pacific media through publications and hands-on projects”.

PJR is the only journal covering media, communication and journalism issues in the Pacific, he adds.

“It draws on the experiences and knowledge of educators, journalists, film-makers and photographers from across the region to provide a unique insight and analysis into a range of issues.”

A short video marking PJR’s 20 years of publication in 2014.   Video: PMC

Need for network ‘urgent’
Dr Devere says it was urgent to establish such a network “to continue the work on Aotearoa New Zealand’s role in the Asia Pacific region following the demise of the Pacific Media Centre at AUT”.

There was no longer a space for those working on the PJR, a journal that has been publishing research related to important and on-going issues in New Zealand’s immediate region.

Dr Devere said no New Zealand university is doing the work being done by APMN.

“While there is a current focus on Pacific issues, there is no stable space for those working on media issues in the Asia Pacific region,” she says.

“There is also a conflict of interest between universities that are now functioning as commercial institutions, and investigative journalism that is engaged in providing accurate and reliable information for citizens.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Op-Ed
Stansfield Smith
From Chicago

Common Dreams, a liberal-left website, reposted an article by David Smilde of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA): Joe Biden Should Not Try to Out-Hawk Trump on Venezuela. It starts off well with the subtitle: “The first task for a Biden administration would be to take military intervention off the table.” The US has no business invading Venezuela. But Smilde’s approach is that the military option is ill-advised because there are more efficient ways of removing the Nicolás Maduro government.

Smilde criticizes the US unilateral sanctions as “doing more harm than good,” something of an understatement, and later says “sanctions pinch the Maduro government, they bludgeon the Venezuelan people.” This seems a departure from WOLA’s long-standing defense of these sanctions. In fact, Common Dreams has twice published open letters (here and here) criticizing Smilde and WOLA for not opposing Washington’s regime change effort in Venezuela.

Smilde’s article advises Biden that Trump’s strategy against Venezuela is counterproductive, that the US needs a better policy for removing Maduro. Smilde’s essay does not take into account that economic warfare against Venezuela originated when Biden was Vice President, and that Biden now attacks Trump for being soft on Venezuela.

To fact check Smilde’s three major criticisms of the Venezuelan government:

1. “The Maduro government has presided over a governance disaster that has forced over 5 million Venezuelans to leave.”  Smilde does not connect what he calls the increased “bludgeoning of the Venezuelan people” with increased emigration due to the economic hardship. 

The 2018 UN report  of the independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred de Zayas stated:

 “While the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is undergoing a severe economic crisis, the Government is not standing idle; it is seeking international assistance to overcome the challenges, diversifying the economy and seeking debt restructuring. Sanctions only aggravate the situation by hindering the imports necessary to produce generic medicines and seeds to increase agricultural production. Sanctions have also led to emigration.”

Rather than point out the economic warfare of US sanctions helped cause emigration, Smilde ambiguously states  Maduro presided over a governance disaster that has forced them to leave. Maduro forced no one to leave. In fact, the government welcomes those who return, as they are now, by the tens of thousands, due to the even worse conditions they faced and are facing in the countries to which they emigrated. 

2. “Maduro has not only undermined democratic institutions, he has repressed protesters, and jailed, tortured and disappeared opponents in what could qualify as ‘crimes against humanity.’ As such, Venezuela might seem ripe for an intervention justified in terms of the ‘responsibility to protect.’”

The link in Smilde’s article takes us to the New York Times, which refers to a report by the NGO Foro Penal. Its executive director, Gabriel Gallo, claims “Venezuela has the greatest quantity of political prisoners in the Americas. Including more than Cuba.”  We may question the criteria used to determine Venezuela has more political prisoners than Colombia, Honduras, Brazil, Bolivia or Mexico.

Who is Gabriel Gallo and Foro Penal? Gallo was a leader of the right wing Venezuelan political party Voluntad Popular (VP), the most violent and anti-democratic party in the anti-Chavista bloc. The most prominent leaders of VP include Leopoldo López and Juan Guaidó, the person the US appointed head of Venezuela.  Leopoldo López launched the attempted coup against President Maduro in 2014. VP activists formed the shock troops of that year’s “guarimbas” protests that left 43 Venezuelans dead, 800 hurt and millions of dollars in property damage. Dozens more were killed in a new wave of VP-backed violence in 2017. Leopoldo López and Juan Guaidó were leaders of the April 2019 failed military coup attempt and contracted this year’s mercenary hit squad invasion. 

In May 2014, Diosdado Cabello, head of the Venezuelan National Assembly, revealed that Foro Penal, along with others, had received funds from the United States and Panama to instigate violent actions in the country. He accused 14 people, including the director of Foro Penal, Alfredo Romero, of participating in a destabilization plan against the Venezuelan government.

In 2017, Human Rights Watch organized a letter to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights condemning Venezuela.  But as Venezuelanalysis noted, “Among the signatories are several usual suspects such as Provea or Foro Penal, whose president Alfredo Romero was a recent speaker in a [Freedom House organized] ‘US Democracy Support’ forum (…) Human Rights Watch  has a long and documented history of bias and outright lies in its reports on Venezuela, which is no surprise given their blatant revolving door with the US government.” Both Freedom House and Human Rights Watch are “human rights” NGOs closely allied to US government foreign policy objectives. 

Venezuelanalysis reported in 2019 that “Guaidó’s representative in the Czech Republic is also the international coordinator for human rights NGO Foro Penal (Penal Forum), which the US State Department has decorated with numerous awards for its work in Venezuela. According to WikiLeaks cables from 2006, Foro Penal has been bankrolled by Freedom House and the Pan-American Development Foundation (PADF) through a USAID-supported project.”

Thus, the information that WOLA and the New York Times rely on for Venezuelan human rights comes from agents of Venezuela’s most violent right wing political party, allied with US government-backed NGOs, all committed to overthrowing the Venezuelan government. 

Human rights abuses have been committed by state agents in Venezuela, but a fair minded assessment would include the fact that the Maduro government has taken corrective action. On June 15, Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab reported on human rights abuse charges against its security force members. A total of 540 had been charged since August 5, 2017, with 426 actually imprisoned. Charges against them include homicide, torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and illegitimate deprivation of liberty. Saab called for improved training of police in protection of human rights. 

This action by Saab, not mentioned by Smilde, came out ten days before Smilde’s Common Dreams article.  

3. “Venezuelans would love to solve this crisis on their own at the voting booth; but they can’t because their country’s electoral institutions have been undermined by the Maduro government.” 

In reality, the primary threat to Venezuelan democracy comes from US-backed coup attempts, which began back in 2002. The US has threatened sanctions against opposition leaders for even running in presidential elections against Nicolás Maduro, rather than boycotting elections and advocating actions to overthrow the elected government.  It was the US that gave the green light to the unelected Juan Guaidó to appoint himself president of Venezuela in January 2019, which the US and its European Union allies then validated. 

The US was the only country in the world not to recognize the legitimacy of Maduro’s 2013 election. This reflected Obama’s strategy of regime change, which could not be achieved by democratic electoral means. Instead, the US sought to bring down the new government by supporting violent protests.

Stories of Venezuelan electoral fraud became more widespread once the US disputed the July 30, 2017 vote for members of the National Constituent Assembly. The Venezuelan opposition has always charged fraud over any election result, unless they won. 

The US then escalated its campaign of accusing Venezuela of electoral fraud during its  presidential elections of May 20, 2018. However, the international Council of Electoral Experts of Latin America (CEELA) observed both the 2017 and 2018 elections.  CEELA’s report on the 2017 vote affirmed that over 8 million did vote, which had been disputed by the opposition. 

Concerning the 2018 election, CEELA concluded:

“CEELA Mission is of the opinion that the process was successfully carried out and that the will of the citizens, freely expressed in ballot boxes, was respected. The electoral process for the Presidential and State Legislative Council Elections 2018 complied with all international standards (…) The CEELA Electoral Accompaniment Mission upholds that the electoral process has consolidated and reaffirmed strengthening of the electoral institutionalism that supports the democratic system.”

Indeed, it is remarkable that the Venezuelan government  has maintained its democratic institutions as well as it has under this constant US-European Union campaign to overthrow it.  

WOLA provides liberal cover for regime change

As Alexander Rubenstein writes, “WOLA provides information and analysis for the White House and Congress and receives wide circulation in the media as an authority on Latin America, characteristics more indicative of a foreign policy think tank than a human rights NGO.”  Its largest funders include Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

The Open Letter to WOLA that Noam Chomsky and others signed notes that WOLA opposed proposals for mediation between the Maduro government and the opposition by the Vatican, Mexico, and Uruguay.

Lucas Koerner recently wrote WOLA: Media’s ‘Left’ Source for Pro-Coup Propaganda in Venezuela. In spite of what Smilde writes in Common Dreams against sanctions, Koerner notes that WOLA has defended Trump’s sanctions. WOLA even found four “virtues” in the August 2017 sanctions responsible for an estimated 40,000 deaths over the following year, as researched by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

In short, Smilde’s beef with both Biden and Trump is that they could do a better job of regime change in Venezuela. WOLA is not a human rights organization, but serves to rationalize, not criticize US regime change attempts. Why Common Dreams provides a sounding board for this is a good question.

Stansfield Smith makes the AFGJ Venezuela & ALBA Weekly News, and has written for Monthly Review Online, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Black Agenda Report, Venezuelanalysis and others. He maintains the website ChicagoALBASolidarity.blogspot.com

[Credit main photo: Supporters of President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas. Open source, Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dgcomsoc/8663274093/in/photostream/]

Frederick B. Mills, Washington DC

Today Bolivia is in morning. On November 15, 2019, police and military forces opened fire on anti-coup protesters in Cochabamba, killing five and wounding scores more. (1) These are conservative figures. The Mexico Hospital in Cochabamba received so many wounded protesters that it was treating victims outside the hospital building, exceeding its capacity. The video transmitted by independent journalist Marco Teruggi, who was at the scene, shows bodies tagged with the names of the deceased: Juan Lopez, Omar Calle, Emilio Colque, Cesar Cipe, and an as yet unidentified victim. (2) This information has been confirmed by the Defensoria del Pueblo, an official government body created in 1994 by constitutional mandate. (3)

On the eve of this atrocity, Ambassador of Bolivia to the UN, Sacha Llorenti, implored “Help us to denounce this please. This occurred in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Today, 15 of November 2019.” (4)

Inside Bolivia there is a virtual media blackout on news about the repression. Although most of the international mainstream media has given sparse coverage of the repression by police, security forces, and irregular shock troops at the service of the coup leaders, the BBC News Mundo headline this morning reads “‘the disproportionate use of force’ against followers of Evo Morales in Bolivia receives the repudiation of international organizations.” (5)

As of this writing, the Defensoria reports 18 killed, 542 wounded, and 624 detained (of which 44 are still detained) since the start of the coup against the democratically elected president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, last Sunday. The Defensoria calls for investigations into these casualties.

In response to the news of the killings in Cochabamba, President Evo Morales, from Mexico where he has asylum, said “we ask the Armed Forces and the Bolivian Police to stop the massacre. The uniform of the institutions of the country cannot be stained with the blood of our people.” (6)

The US has recognized the self proclaimed “interim president” of Bolivia, right-wing Senator  Jeanine Áñez. Áñez was appointed without a legislative quorum on November 12 and promptly put together a shadow cabinet with no Indigenous members.  Meanwhile the constitutional president is still Evo Morales because, per article 161 (3) of the Bolivian constitution, the legislative branch of government has not accepted his resignation. 

1. Marco Teruggi reports on Nov. 15 that, based on information from Radio “Kausachun coca” two more persons have died of their wounds at the Viedma hospital. This has not been confirmed by the Defensoria.
2. https://twitter.com/Marco_Teruggi/status/1195481161314820096?s=20
3. https://www.defensoria.gob.bo/noticias/comunicado-de-prensa
4. https://twitter.com/SachaLlorenti/status/1195487251737825280?s=20
5. https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-america-latina-50443318
6. https://twitter.com/evoespueblo/status/1195482785403854849?s=20
   

Frederick B. Mills is Professor of Philosophy at Bowie State University and Co-Director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

The nomination is acknowledgement of the hard work and innovation of the Library’s Digital Services team in creating an attractive and accessible platform for sharing AUT’s open research publications with a global audience.

Tuwhera started in 2016 with the initial objective of hosting online open access journals edited by our university’s academic staff using Open Journal Systems.

Launching with two peer-reviewed titles, including the Scopus-ranked PJR, Tuwhera has grown significantly in a short time to include research summaries, monographs, conference proceedings and links to the open collections in the AUT’s institutional research repository (formerly Scholarly Commons).

The peer reviewed collection now totals eight titles covering health, finance, law, education, journalism, psychotherapy and indigenous research. These include two entirely new journal publications alongside their more established stablemates, illustrating the way Tuwhera seeks to provide an incubator space for supporting emerging voices and unheard discourse.

A second PMC title, Pacific Journalism Monographs, is also included.

The multiple meanings and contexts of Tuwhera (open, or be open, or opening up) and of other Māori concepts have informed and shaped the team’s work and its relationships. Tuwhera’s kaupapa of openness is built upon an understanding that knowledge exists to be shared for the wider benefit of the communities it springs from.

Luqman Hayes and Donna Coventry will be attending the gala awards ceremony in Wellington on Tuesday 23 October.

Pacific Journalism Review on Tuwhera

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3

Report by Pacific Media Centre ]]>