I want to share a writer’s journey — of living and writing through the Genocide.  Where I live and how I live could not be further from the horror playing out in Gaza and, increasingly, on the West Bank.

Yet, because my country provides military, intelligence and diplomatic support to Israel and the US, I feel compelled to answer the call to support Palestine by doing the one thing I know best: writing.

I live in a paradise that supports genocide
I am one of the blessed of the earth. I’m surrounded by similarly fortunate people. I live in a heart-stoppingly beautiful bay.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

30 April 1975. Saigon Fell, Vietnam Rose. The story of Vietnam after the US fled the country is not a fairy tale, it is not a one-dimensional parable of resurrection, of liberation from oppression, of joy for all — but there is a great deal to celebrate.

After over a century of brutal colonial oppression by the French, the Japanese, and the Americans and their various minions, the people of Vietnam won victory in one of the great liberation struggles of history.

It became a source of inspiration and of hope for millions of people oppressed by imperial powers in Central & South America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Civil war – a war among several
The civil war in Vietnam, coterminous with the war against the Western powers, pitted communists and anti-communists in a long and pitiless struggle.

Within that were various strands — North versus South, southern communists and nationalists against pro-Western forces, and so on. As various political economists have pointed out, all wars are in some way class wars too — pitting the elites against ordinary people.

As has happened repeatedly throughout history, once one or more great power becomes involved in a civil war it is subsumed within that colonial war. The South’s President Ngô Đình Diệm, for example, was assassinated on orders of the Americans.

By 1969, US aid accounted for 80 percent of South Vietnam’s government budget; they effectively owned the South and literally called the shots.

US punishes its victims
This month, 50 years after the Vietnamese achieved independence from their colonial overlords, US President Donald Trump declared April 2 “Liberation Day” and imposed some of the heaviest tariffs on Vietnam because they didn’t buy enough US goods!

As economist Joseph Stiglitz pointed out, they don’t yet have enough aggregate demand for the kind of goods the US produces. That might have something to do with the decades it has taken to rebuild their lives and economy from the Armageddon inflicted on them by the US, Australia, New Zealand and other unindicted war criminals.

Straight after they fled, the US declared themselves the victims of the Vietnamese and imposed punitive sanctions on liberated Vietnam for decades — punishing their victims.

Under Gerald Ford (1974–1977), Jimmy Carter (1977–1981), Ronald Reagan (1981–1989), George H.W. Bush (1989–1993) right up to Bill Clinton (1993–2001), the US enforced the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA) of 1917.

The US froze the assets of Vietnam at the very time it was trying to recover from the wholesale devastation of the country.

Tens of millions of much-needed dollars were captured in US banks, enforced by the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). The US also took advantage of its muscle to veto IMF and World Bank loans to Vietnam.

Countries like Australia and New Zealand, to their eternal shame, took part in both the war, the war crimes, and imposing sanctions and other punitive measures subsequently.

The ‘Boat People’ refugee crisis
While millions celebrated the victory in 1975, millions of others were fearful. The period of national unification and economic recovery was painful, typically repressive — when one militarised regime replaces another.

This triggered flight: firstly among urban elites — military officers, government workers, and professionals who were most closely-linked to the US-run regime.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

This week Cambodia marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of Phnom Penh to the murderous Khmer Rouge, and Vietnam celebrates the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese forces in April 1975.

They are being commemorated very differently; after all, there’s nothing to celebrate in Cambodia. Its capital Phnom Penh was emptied, and its people had to then endure the “killing fields” and the darkest years of its modern existence under Khmer Rouge rule.

Over the border in Vietnam, however, there will be modest celebrations for their victory against US (and Australian) forces at the end of this month.

Yet, this week’s news of Indonesia considering a Russian request to base aircraft at the Biak airbase in West Papua throws in stark relief a troubling question I have long asked — did Australia back the wrong war 63 years ago? These different areas — and histories — of Southeast Asia may seem disconnected, but allow me to draw some links.

Through the 1950s until the early 1960s, it was official Australian policy under the Menzies government to support The Netherlands as it prepared West Papua for independence, knowing its people were ethnically and religiously different from the rest of Indonesia.

They are a Christian Melanesian people who look east to Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Pacific, not west to Muslim Asia. Australia at the time was administering and beginning to prepare PNG for self-rule.

The Second World War had shown the importance of West Papua (then part of Dutch New Guinea) to Australian security, as it had been a base for Japanese air raids over northern Australia.

Japanese beeline to Sorong
Early in the war, Japanese forces made a beeline to Sorong on the Bird’s Head Peninsula of West Papua for its abundance of high-quality oil. Former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam served in a RAAF unit briefly stationed in Merauke in West Papua.

By 1962, the US wanted Indonesia to annex West Papua as a way of splitting Chinese and Russian influence in the region, as well as getting at the biggest gold deposit on earth at the Grasberg mine, something which US company Freeport continues to mine, controversially, today.

Following the so-called Bunker Agreement signed in New York in 1962, The Netherlands reluctantly agreed to relinquish West Papua to Indonesia under US pressure. Australia, too, folded in line with US interests.

That would also be the year when Australia sent its first group of 30 military advisers to Vietnam. Instead of backing West Papuan nationhood, Australia joined the US in suppressing Vietnam’s.

As a result of US arm-twisting, Australia ceded its own strategic interests in allowing Indonesia to expand eastwards into Pacific territories by swallowing West Papua. Instead, Australians trooped off to fight the unwinnable wars of Indochina.

To me, it remains one of the great what-ifs of Australian strategic history — if Australia had held the line with the Dutch against US moves, then West Papua today would be free, the East Timor invasion of 1975 was unlikely to have ever happened and Australia might not have been dragged into the Vietnam War.

Instead, as Cambodia and Vietnam mark their anniversaries this month, Australia continues to be reminded of the potential threat Indonesian-controlled West Papua has posed to Australia and the Pacific since it gave way to US interests in 1962.

Russian space agency plans
Nor is this the first time Russia has deployed assets to West Papua. Last year, Russian media reported plans under way for the Russian space agency Roscosmos to help Indonesia build a space base on Biak island.

In 2017, RAAF Tindal was scrambled just before Christmas to monitor Russian Tu95 nuclear “Bear” bombers doing their first-ever sorties in the South Pacific, flying between Australia and Papua New Guinea. I wrote not long afterwards how Australia was becoming “caught in a pincer” between Indonesian and Russian interests on Indonesia’s side and Chinese moves coming through the Pacific on the other.

All because we have abandoned the West Papuans to endure their own “slow-motion genocide” under Indonesian rule. Church groups and NGOs estimate up to 500,000 Papuans have perished under 60 years of Indonesian military rule, while Jakarta refuses to allow international media and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit.

Alex Sobel, an MP in the UK Parliament, last week called on Indonesia to allow the UN High Commissioner to visit but it is exceedingly rare to hear any Australian MPs ask questions about our neighbour West Papua in the Australian Parliament.

Canberra continues to enhance security relations with Indonesia in a naive belief that the nation is our ally against an assertive China. This ignores Jakarta’s deepening relations with both Russia and China, and avoids any mention of ongoing atrocities in West Papua or the fact that jihadi groups are operating close to Australia’s border.

Indonesia’s militarisation of West Papua, jihadi infiltration and now the potential for Russia to use airbases or space bases on Biak should all be “red lines” for Australia, yet successive governments remain desperate not to criticise Indonesia.

Ignoring actual ‘hot war’
Australia’s national security establishment remains focused on grand global strategy and acquiring over-priced gear, while ignoring the only actual “hot war” in our region.

Our geography has not changed; the most important line of defence for Australia remains the islands of Melanesia to our north and the co-operation and friendship of its peoples.

Strong independence movements in West Papua, Bougainville and New Caledonia all materially affect Australian security but Canberra can always be relied on to defer to Indonesian, American and French interests in these places, rather than what is ultimately in Australian — and Pacific Islander — interests.

Australia needs to develop a defence policy centred on a “Melanesia First” strategy from Timor to Fiji, radiating outwards. Yet Australia keeps deferring to external interests, to our cost, as history continues to remind us.

Ben Bohane is a Vanuatu-based photojournalist and policy analyst who has reported across Asia and the Pacific for the past 36 years. His website is benbohane.com  This article was first published by The Sydney Morning Herald and is republished with the author’s permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

COMMENTARY: By David Robie in Ho Chi Minh City

Vietnam’s famous Củ Chi tunnel network was on our bucket list for years.

For me, it was for more than half a century, ever since I had been editor of the Melbourne Sunday Observer, which campaigned against Australian (and New Zealand) involvement in the unjust Vietnam War — redubbed the “American War” by the Vietnamese.

For Del, it was a dream to see how the resistance of a small and poor country could defeat the might of colonisers.

“I wanted to see for myself how the tunnels and the sacrifices of the Vietnamese had contributed to winning the war,” she recalls.

“Love for country, a longing for peace and a resistance to foreign domination were strong factors in victory.”

We finally got our wish last month — a half day trip to the tunnel network, which stretched some 250 kilometres at the peak of their use. The museum park is just 45 km northeast of Ho Chi Minh city, known as Saigon during the war years (many locals still call it that).

Building of the tunnels started after the Second World War after the Japanese had withdrawn from Indochina and liberation struggles had begun against the French. But they reached their most dramatic use in the war against the Americans, especially during the spate of surprise attacks during the Tet Offensive in 1968.

The Viet Minh kicked off the network, when it was a sort of southern gateway to the Ho Chi Minh trail in the 1940s as the communist forces edged closer to Saigon.

Eventually the liberation successes of the Viet Minh led to humiliating defeat of the French colonial forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

Cutting off supply lines
The French had rebuilt an ex-Japanese airbase in a remote valley near the Laotian border in a so-called “hedgehog” operation — in a belief that the Viet Minh forces did not have anti-aircraft artillery. They hoped to cut off the Viet Minh’s guerrilla forces’ supply lines and draw them into a decisive conventional battle where superior French firepower would prevail.

However, they were the ones who were cut off.

The Củ Chi tunnels explored.    Video: History channel

The French military command badly miscalculated as General Nguyen Giap’s forces secretly and patiently hauled artillery through the jungle-clad hills over months and established strategic batteries with tunnels for the guns to be hauled back under cover after firing several salvos.

Giap compared Dien Bien Phu to a “rice bowl” with the Viet Minh on the edges and the French at the bottom.

After a 54-day siege between 13 March and 7 May 1954, as the French forces became increasingly surrounded and with casualties mounting (up to 2300 killed), the fortifications were over-run and the surviving soldiers surrendered.

The defeat led to global shock that an anti-colonial guerrilla army had defeated a major European power.

The French government of Prime Minister Joseph Laniel resigned and the 1954 Geneva Accords were signed with France pulling out all its forces in the whole of Indochina, although Vietnam was temporarily divided in half at the 17th Parallel — the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, and the republican State of Vietnam nominally under Emperor Bao Dai (but in reality led by a series of dictators with US support).

Debacle of Dien Bien Phu
The debacle of Dien Bien Phu is told very well in an exhibition that takes up an entire wing of the Vietnam War Remnants Museum (it was originally named the “Museum of American War Crimes”).

But that isn’t all at the impressive museum, the history of the horrendous US misadventure is told in gruesome detail – with some 58,000 American troops killed and the death of an estimated up to 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. (Not to mention the 521 Australian and 37 New Zealand soldiers, and the many other allied casualties.)

The section of the museum devoted to the Agent Orange defoliant war waged on the Vietnamese and the country’s environment is particularly chilling – casualties and people suffering from the aftermath of the poisoning are now into the fourth generation.

The global anti-Vietnam War peace protests are also honoured at the museum and one section of the compound has a recreation of the prisons holding Viet Cong independence fighters, including the torture “tiger cells”.

A guillotine is on display. The execution method was used by both France and the US-backed South Vietnam regimes against pro-independence fighters.

A placard says: “During the US war against Vietnam, the guillotine was transported to all of the provinces in South Vietnam to decapitate the Vietnam patriots. [On 12 March 1960], the last man who was executed by guillotine was Hoang Le Kha.”

A member of the ant-French liberation “scout movement”, Hoang was sentenced to death by a military court set up by the US-backed President Ngo Dinh Diem’s regime.

In 1981, France outlawed capital punishment and abandoned the use of the guillotine, but the last execution was as recent as 1977.

Museum visit essential
Visiting Ho Ch Min City’s War Remnants Museum is essential for background and contextual understanding of the role and importance of the Củ Chi tunnels.

Also for insights about how the last US troops left Vietnam in March 1973, Nixon resigned the following year under pressure from the Watergate revelations, and a series of reverses led to the collapse of the South Vietnam regime and the humiliating scenes of the final Americans withdrawing by helicopter from the US Embassy rooftop in Saigon in April 1975.

Back in my protest days as chief subeditor and then editor of Melbourne’s Sunday Observer, I had published Ronald Haberle’s My Lai massacre photos the same week as Life Magazine in December 1969 (an estimated 500 women, children and elderly men were killed at the hamlet on 16 March 1968 near Quang Nai city and the atrocity was covered up for almost two years).

Ironically, we were prosecuted for “obscenity’ for publishing photographs of a real life US obscenity and war crime in the Australian state of Victoria. (The case was later dropped).

So our trip to the Củ Chi tunnels was laced with expectation. What would we see? What would we feel?

The tunnels played a critical role in the “American” War, eventually leading to the collapse of South Vietnamese resistance in Saigon. And the guides talk about the experience and the sacrifice of Viet Cong fighters in reverential tones.

The tunnel network at Ben Dinh is in a vast park-like setting with restored sections, including underground kitchen (with smoke outlets directed through simulated ant hills), medical centre, and armaments workshop.

ingenious bamboo and metal spike booby traps, snakes and scorpions were among the obstacles to US forces pursuing resistance fighters. Special units — called “tunnel rats” using smaller soldiers were eventually trained to combat the Củ Chi system but were not very effective.

We were treated to cooked cassava, a staple for the fighters underground.

A disabled US tank demonstrates how typical hit-and-run attacks by the Viet Cong fighters would cripple their treads and then they would be attacked through their manholes.

‘Walk’ through showdown
When it came to the section where we could walk through the tunnels ourselves, our guide said: “It only takes a couple of minutes.”

It was actually closer to 10 minutes, it seemed, and I actually got stuck momentarily when my knees turned to jelly with the crouch posture that I needed to use for my height. I had to crawl on hands and knees the rest of the way.

A warning sign said don’t go if you’re aged over 70 (I am 79), have heart issues (I do, with arteries), or are claustrophobic (I’m not). I went anyway.

People who have done this are mostly very positive about the experience and praise the tourist tunnels set-up. Many travel agencies run guided trips to the tunnels.

“Exploring the Củ Chi tunnels near Saigon was a fascinating and historically significant experience,” wrote one recent visitor on a social media link.

“The intricate network of tunnels, used during the Vietnam War, provided valuable insights into the resilience and ingenuity of the Vietnamese people. Crawling through the tunnels, visiting hidden bunkers, and learning about guerrilla warfare tactics were eye-opening . . .

“It’s a place where history comes to life, and it’s a must-visit for anyone interested in Vietnam’s wartime history and the remarkable engineering of the Củ Chi tunnels.”

“The visit gives a very real sense of what the war was like from the Vietnamese side — their tunnels and how they lived and efforts to fight the Americans,” wrote another visitor. “Very realistic experience, especially if you venture into the tunnels.”

Overall, it was a powerful experience and a reminder that no matter how immensely strong a country might be politically and militarily, if grassroots people are determined enough for freedom and justice they will triumph in the end.

There is hope yet for Palestine.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Vietnam’s famous Củ Chi tunnel network was on our bucket list for years.

For me, it was for more than half a century, ever since I had been editor of the Melbourne Sunday Observer, which campaigned against Australian (and New Zealand) involvement in the unjust Vietnam War — redubbed the “American War” by the Vietnamese.

For Del, it was a dream to see how the resistance of a small and poor country could defeat the might of colonisers.

• READ MORE: Flashback to the 1968 My Lai massacre: ‘Something dark and bloody’
• Ho Chi Minh City’s War Remnants Museum

“I wanted to see for myself how the tunnels and the sacrifices of the Vietnamese had contributed to winning the war,” she recalls.

“Love for country, a longing for peace and a resistance to foreign domination were strong factors in victory.”

We finally got our wish last month — a half day trip to the tunnel network, which stretched some 250 kilometres at the peak of their use. The museum park is just 45 km northeast of Ho Chi Minh city, known as Saigon during the war years (many locals still call it that).

Building of the tunnels started after the Second World War after the Japanese had withdrawn from Indochina and liberation struggles had begun against the French. But they reached their most dramatic use in the war against the Americans, especially during the spate of surprise attacks during the Tet Offensive in 1968.

The Viet Minh kicked off the network, when it was a sort of southern gateway to the Ho Chi Minh trail in the 1940s as the communist forces edged closer to Saigon.

Eventually the liberation successes of the Viet Minh led to humiliating defeat of the French colonial forces at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.

Cutting off supply lines
The French had rebuilt an ex-Japanese airbase in a remote valley near the Laotian border in a so-called “hedgehog” operation — in a belief that the Viet Minh forces did not have anti-aircraft artillery. They hoped to cut off the Viet Minh’s guerrilla forces’ supply lines and draw them into a decisive conventional battle where superior French firepower would prevail.

However, they were the ones who were cut off.

The Củ Chi tunnels explored.    Video: History channel

The French military command badly miscalculated as General Nguyen Giap’s forces secretly and patiently hauled artillery through the jungle-clad hills over months and established strategic batteries with tunnels for the guns to be hauled back under cover after firing several salvos.

Giap compared Dien Bien Phu to a “rice bowl” with the Viet Minh on the edges and the French at the bottom.

After a 54-day siege between 13 March and 7 May 1954, as the French forces became increasingly surrounded and with casualties mounting (up to 2300 killed), the fortifications were over-run and the surviving soldiers surrendered.

The defeat led to global shock that an anti-colonial guerrilla army had defeated a major European power.

The French government of Prime Minister Joseph Laniel resigned and the 1954 Geneva Accords were signed with France pulling out all its forces in the whole of Indochina, although Vietnam was temporarily divided in half at the 17th Parallel — the communist Democratic Republic of Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, and the republican State of Vietnam nominally under Emperor Bao Dai (but in reality led by a series of dictators with US support).

Debacle of Dien Bien Phu
The debacle of Dien Bien Phu is told very well in an exhibition that takes up an entire wing of the Vietnam War Remnants Museum (it was originally named the “Museum of American War Crimes”).

But that isn’t all at the impressive museum, the history of the horrendous US misadventure is told in gruesome detail – with some 58,000 American troops killed and the death of an estimated up to 3 million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. (Not to mention the 521 Australian and 37 New Zealand soldiers, and the many other allied casualties.)

The section of the museum devoted to the Agent Orange defoliant war waged on the Vietnamese and the country’s environment is particularly chilling – casualties and people suffering from the aftermath of the poisoning are now into the fourth generation.

The global anti-Vietnam War peace protests are also honoured at the museum and one section of the compound has a recreation of the prisons holding Viet Cong independence fighters, including the torture “tiger cells”.

A guillotine is on display. The execution method was used by both France and the US-backed South Vietnam regimes against pro-independence fighters.

A placard says: “During the US war against Vietnam, the guillotine was transported to all of the provinces in South Vietnam to decapitate the Vietnam patriots. [On 12 March 1960], the last man who was executed by guillotine was Hoang Le Kha.”

A member of the ant-French liberation “scout movement”, Hoang was sentenced to death by a military court set up by the US-backed President Ngo Dinh Diem’s regime.

In 1981, France outlawed capital punishment and abandoned the use of the guillotine, but the last execution was as recent as 1977.

Museum visit essential
Visiting Ho Ch Min City’s War Remnants Museum is essential for background and contextual understanding of the role and importance of the Củ Chi tunnels.

Also for insights about how the last US troops left Vietnam in March 1973, Nixon resigned the following year under pressure from the Watergate revelations, and a series of reverses led to the collapse of the South Vietnam regime and the humiliating scenes of the final Americans withdrawing by helicopter from the US Embassy rooftop in Saigon in April 1975.

Back in my protest days as chief subeditor and then editor of Melbourne’s Sunday Observer, I had published Ronald Haberle’s My Lai massacre photos the same week as Life Magazine in December 1969 (an estimated 500 women, children and elderly men were killed at the hamlet on 16 March 1968 near Quang Nai city and the atrocity was covered up for almost two years).

Ironically, we were prosecuted for “obscenity’ for publishing photographs of a real life US obscenity and war crime in the Australian state of Victoria. (The case was later dropped).

So our trip to the Củ Chi tunnels was laced with expectation. What would we see? What would we feel?

The tunnels played a critical role in the “American” War, eventually leading to the collapse of South Vietnamese resistance in Saigon. And the guides talk about the experience and the sacrifice of Viet Cong fighters in reverential tones.

The tunnel network at Ben Dinh is in a vast park-like setting with restored sections, including underground kitchen (with smoke outlets directed through simulated ant hills), medical centre, and armaments workshop.

ingenious bamboo and metal spike booby traps, snakes and scorpions were among the obstacles to US forces pursuing resistance fighters. Special units — called “tunnel rats” using smaller soldiers were eventually trained to combat the Củ Chi system but were not very effective.

We were treated to cooked cassava, a staple for the fighters underground.

A disabled US tank demonstrates how typical hit-and-run attacks by the Viet Cong fighters would cripple their treads and then they would be attacked through their manholes.

The park also has a shooting range where tourists can fire M-16s and AK-47s — by buying their own bullets.

‘Walk’ through showdown
When it came to the section where we could walk through the tunnels ourselves, our guide said: “It only takes a couple of minutes.”

It was actually closer to 10 minutes, it seemed, and I actually got stuck momentarily when my knees turned to jelly with the crouch posture that I needed to use for my height. I had to crawl on hands and knees the rest of the way.

A warning sign said don’t go if you’re aged over 70 (I am 79), have heart issues (I do, with arteries), or are claustrophobic (I’m not). I went anyway.

People who have done this are mostly very positive about the experience and praise the tourist tunnels set-up. Many travel agencies run guided trips to the tunnels.

“Exploring the Củ Chi tunnels near Saigon was a fascinating and historically significant experience,” wrote one recent visitor on a social media link.

“The intricate network of tunnels, used during the Vietnam War, provided valuable insights into the resilience and ingenuity of the Vietnamese people. Crawling through the tunnels, visiting hidden bunkers, and learning about guerrilla warfare tactics were eye-opening . . .

“It’s a place where history comes to life, and it’s a must-visit for anyone interested in Vietnam’s wartime history and the remarkable engineering of the Củ Chi tunnels.”

“The visit gives a very real sense of what the war was like from the Vietnamese side — their tunnels and how they lived and efforts to fight the Americans,” wrote another visitor. “Very realistic experience, especially if you venture into the tunnels.”

Overall, it was a powerful experience and a reminder that no matter how immensely strong a country might be politically and militarily, if grassroots people are determined enough for freedom and justice they will triumph in the end.

There is hope yet for Palestine.

• The Melbourne-based Asia Vacations Group has recently expanded its Vietnam offering in New Zealand.

Analysis by Geoffrey Miller.

New Zealand’s independent foreign policy is back. That’s a key underlying message from Jacinda Ardern’s trip this week to Southeast Asia.

The New Zealand Prime Minister attended the East Asia Summit in Cambodia over the weekend. She will head to Thailand for the APEC leaders’ meeting later in the week.

In between, Ardern is also making a surprise four-day bilateral visit to Vietnam.

As has become customary for much of Ardern’s foreign travel, the Vietnam portion of this week’s trip is being branded as a ‘trade mission’, a strategy deployed in part to deflect potential domestic criticism of the PM for spending too much time on the diplomatic circuit abroad.

Ardern all but admitted in interviews prior to embarking on her Asia trip that her no-show at the COP27 summit in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh was driven by an unwillingness to spend too much time outside New Zealand.

While it is certainly true that there is a strong trade foundation to New Zealand’s ties with Vietnam – the country is New Zealand’s 14^th biggest export market – there is probably a little more to it than that.

So far in 2022, most of Jacinda Ardern’s international travel has been focused on countries in the Western-led camp that has been vocal in condemning Russia for its war on Ukraine.

In April, Ardern’s first travel outside New Zealand since early 2020 was pointedly to Singapore and Japan – two of the few Asian countries that had sanctioned Russia.

Trips to the United Kingdom, United States (to meet Joe Biden at the White House), Spain (as an invited guest at the NATO summit), Belgium (to sign a free trade deal with the EU) and Australia then followed.

But by mid-year, there seemed to be a realisation inside Ardern’s Labour Government that New Zealand had tacked too far towards the West in the first six months of 2022.

New Zealand’s increasingly pro-Western foreign policy had begun to irk China. The warning signs from Beijing led Ardern to recalibrate in speeches in July and August, in which she emphasised New Zealand’s traditional independent foreign policy and sought to put a little more daylight between Wellington and Washington.

However, these recalibration speeches were themselves delivered to Western audiences in London, Sydney and Auckland.

Until now, the shift had not really been reflected in the Prime Minister’s travel schedule, which in recent months focused on the Pacific and also included a trip to London (for the Queen’s funeral) and New York (for the UN General Assembly).

The return of in-person gatherings for both the East Asia Summit (EAS) and APEC formats is particularly welcome news for New Zealand, which as a small country receives fewer such multilateral opportunities.

Moreover, amidst heightened geopolitical polarisation, the broadly inclusive nature of both the EAS and APEC – which brings together Russia, China, the United States and many smaller members from around the Pacific Rim – is now almost priceless.

And when viewed through a trade lens alone, APEC will give New Zealand’s Prime Minister a particularly invaluable opportunity to develop connections with leaders who otherwise might not receive the attention from Wellington that they deserve.

This is particularly true for Latin America, which is represented at APEC by Chile, Mexico and Peru.

Of the three, Mexico currently holds the greatest significance for New Zealand: trade in both directions is surging. The country now sits comfortably inside New Zealand’s top 30 export markets, in 26^th place.

Ardern has yet to visit Latin America since becoming PM in 2017, although she did hold a sideline meeting with Chilean President Gabriel Boric at the UN General Assembly in September. In June, Ardern also dispatched her education minister, Chris Hipkins, to Chile and Brazil to promote New Zealand’s international education sector which had suffered greatly from border restrictions during the pandemic.

Jacinda Ardern’s international popularity – which has only increased during the Covid-19 era – means that she can easily secure sideline meetings with leaders at bigger gatherings.

Furthermore, the summits in Cambodia and Thailand – and especially the side trip to Vietnam – provide the Prime Minister with her best opportunity yet to learn about the foreign policy stances being taken by non-Western countries.

Vietnam is a case in point.

Hanoi has long maintained friendly ties with Moscow, a friendship built on Russia’s support and solidarity for the like-minded, communist Vietnam during the Cold War.

In 2022, this strong relationship has seen Hanoi refrain from criticising Moscow’s war on Ukraine (at least in public) – and led Vietnam to abstain on key votes in March and October which condemned Russia in the UN General Assembly.

Moreover, Vietnam’s Nguyen Phu Trong – the country’s communist leader – recently chose to visit China for his first foreign trip since 2019.

Trong’s visit to Beijing was the first by a foreign leader since Xi Jinping received a third term at October’s Communist Party Congress. The symbolism and warmth of the trip showed that Vietnam will not be easily swayed by US pressure to throw its lot in with the West, despite the existence of genuine tensions between Hanoi and Beijing over the South China Sea.

As if to avoid any doubt, Trong called Vietnam’s relationship with China his ‘top priority’ while in Beijing and firmly ruled out joining military alliances – a pledge which would have been music to Xi’s ears.

The bonhomie in Beijing represented a setback of sorts for Washington, which had offered a carrot to Hanoi by including it in the US’s new Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) initiative earlier in the year. The IPEF is vague and uninspiring overall, but a focus on ‘supply chain resilience’ is an indication that its main purpose is to be a vehicle that challenges China’s economic dominance.

Still, the IPEF involvement – and Vietnam’s coolness towards Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and new Global Security Initiative (GSI) – shows that Hanoi is likely to continue to forge a foreign policy that walks a tightrope between both Washington and Beijing.

In Vietnam, this strategy is sometimes referred to ‘bamboo diplomacy’ – tough when required, but flexible when needed.

While in Vietnam this week, Jacinda Ardern may want to give some thought to Vietnam’s approach.

After all, there are some remarkable similarities between Vietnam’s bamboo diplomacy and New Zealand’s own ‘independent foreign policy’ positioning that seeks to keep both China – its biggest trading partner by far – and traditional Western partners on side.

New Zealand’s greatest foreign policy challenge is threading this geopolitical needle.

The good news is that other countries in the Indo-Pacific – and further afield – are facing this challenge too.

Jacinda Ardern can learn from them.

Geoffrey Miller is the Democracy Project’s geopolitical analyst and writes on current New Zealand foreign policy and related geopolitical issues. He has lived in Germany and the Middle East and is a learner of Arabic and Russian.

Further reading on international relations and the PM at the East Asia Summit

Claire Trevett (Herald): PM Jacinda Ardern at the East Asia Summit: A call to do more in Myanmar, flags concern about China
Benedict Collins (1News): ‘Sober’ East Asia Summit concludes
Claire Trevett (Herald): The PM’s hustle – Jacinda Ardern’s sharp elbow work to get face time with US President Joe Biden (paywalled)
Thomas Manch (Stuff): Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ‘optimistic’ as leaders discuss worsening world crises
Jo Moir (Newsroom): No shortage of ‘stains on the region’ at East Asia Summit
Claire Trevett (Herald): PM Jacinda Ardern arrives for East Asia Summit: ‘Storm clouds’ over region
Gyles Beckford (RNZ): Myanmar govt’s executions ‘a stain on region’ – Jacinda Ardern
RNZ: PM Jacinda Ardern hopes to drive regional consensus at Asian summits
1News: Govt announces upgrade to ASEAN trade deal
Amelia Wade (Newshub): Myanmar’s executions ‘a stain on our region’, Jacinda Ardern says, as week of southeast Asian mega meetings begins
Thomas Manch (Stuff): PM Jacinda Ardern sits down with world leaders for East Asia Summit; Putin a no show
Amelia Wade (Newshub): Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern jets off to Southeast Asia, racking up the air miles for summit season
Jamie Gray (Herald): What Xi Jinping’s re-election in China means for NZ Inc (paywalled)
Nicholas Khoo (Stuff): Why NZ’s morality narrative on Ukraine doesn’t work

Other items of interest and importance today

GOVERNMENT AND PARLIAMENT
Jamie Ensor (Newshub): 2023 election: The key parties, latest polling, main issues, cost of living
Audrey Young (Herald): Luxon’s first year as leader: Tackling Ardern and her ‘career politician’ colleagues (paywalled)
Claire Trevett (Herald): Polls deliver cold, hard reality for the Labour Party and Jacinda Ardern – but is Winston Peters benefiting? (paywalled)
Anna Whyte (Stuff): ‘Hell of a rush to get stuff done’: Should elections be held every four years?
Peter Wilson (RNZ): Week in Politics: A poll, a reappointment and an interesting by-election line up
The Standard: Why is Labour such a hard sell now?
Leena Tailor (Women’s Weekly/Herald): From migrant to minister: Priyanca Radhakrishnan’s power move
Steven Cowan: Trickle down feminism
Andrew Kirton (Herald): Speculation begins on the date of the next NZ election (paywalled)
Giles Dexter (RNZ): Under-fire Labour turns sights on bank profits and fuel
Phil Smith (RNZ): Reimagining Parliament
Ellie McKenzie (Transparency International): New Zealand lobbying oversight lacking in comparison to similar countries

THREE WATERS
1News: Three Waters: National’s policy to be revealed closer to election
Thomas Cranmer: The Three Waters select committee reports back
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): Everyone agrees to change Three Waters, but no one agrees what the changes should be
Jonathan Milne (Newsroom): The woman whose impassioned plea won over Three Waters MPs
Shane Reti (Herald): Three Waters legislation may be rammed through under urgency (paywalled)
James Perry (Māori TV): Changes to Three Waters reform but co-governance to stay
Rebecca Howard (BusinessDesk): Mahuta welcomes 3 waters report (paywalled)
Brent Edwards (NBR): Three Waters reform to go through largely unchanged (paywalled)
Adam Pearse (Herald): Three Waters co-governance retained after 88,000 public submissions
RNZ: Three Waters: Government agrees to changes after Select Committee recommendations

ECONOMY, EMPLOYMENT AND INEQUALITY
RNZ: Reserve Bank created ‘perfect storm’ for inequality – Bernard Hickey
Damien Grant (Stuff): Bank profits aren’t the problem, the Reserve Bank is
Herald: Big power companies delivering excess dividends in the billions, new study claims
Luke Malpass (Stuff): Adrian Orr, Grant Robertson, National and the price of money
Bernard Hickey: A post-mortem on an inter-generational and institutional tragedy (paywalled)
Tom Hunt (Stuff): Workers needing food help the new normal as Wellington prices soar
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Herald): Reserve Bank governor needs to wake up to his role (paywalled)
Fran O’Sullivan (Herald): Less fire, more ice-water please, governor (paywalled)
Steven Joyce (Herald): Grant Robertson risks undermining Reserve Bank independence (paywalled)
Eric Crampton (Stuff): We all turn a little bit crazy when prices rise in a crisis
John Roughan (Herald): There’s more to inflation than wages (paywalled)
Hillmarè Schulze (NBR): Māori households are getting poorer despite increased Govt funds (paywalled)
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer (Herald): It’s time to break up the old boys’ network and give land back
Shauni James (Herald): Rotorua Salvation Army Foodbank records 89pc surge in demand ahead
Matt Cowley (Herald): Is the Fair Pay Agreement fair play? (paywalled)
Calida Stuart-Menteath and Hamish McNicol (NBR): Windfall taxing big banks’ profit is not the answer (paywalled)
Andrea Vance (Stuff): Air New Zealand no longer delivers the service it sells, nor can it handle it when things go wrong

HOUSING
John Minto (Daily Blog): Hundreds of millions in state house land sold by Labour in the middle of a housing catastrophe
Catherine Hubbard (Stuff): Motel owners at the coal face of the housing shortage
Sonya Bateson (Herald): Stop the blame game on emergency housing – we need action
Miriam Bell (Stuff): Rent increases are stabilising, but at a high level

HEALTH
Virginia Fallon (Stuff): The whole tooth: Pliers, shame and the biting cost of dental care in New Zealand
Newshub: Dentist visibly emotional as he spells out consequences Kiwis face when they don’t visit dentist
Aaron Dahmen (Herald): ‘We have to do better’ – Government considering paid placements for nursing students
Adam Pearse (Herald): ‘Erosion of investment’: How the latest addition to Te Whatu Ora’s board sees the future of healthcare
Phil Pennington (RNZ): Four major hospital upgrade projects in South Island face uncertainty
RNZ: Emergency department pressures: Te Whatu Ora ‘doing what we can’
Janine Rankin (Stuff): Private hospital theatre promises surgery for more public patients
Samantha Heath (Herald): Aged care in critical need (paywalled)

EDUCATION
Erin Gourley and Gianina Schwanecke (Stuff): Principals warn literacy and numeracy changes could ‘provoke a crisis’
Emma Hatton (Newsroom): Pleas for complete overhaul of teacher aide funding system
Anna Whyte (Stuff): Primary teachers to decide on pay offer, union labels it ‘well short’
Greg Newbold: English literacy essential
Jerry Coyne: Shamanism makes comeback in New Zealand

MEDIA
Colin Peacock (RNZ): Herald’s bid to short-circuit short-termism and tribalism
Hayden Donnell (RNZ): Annoying both sides doesn’t equal getting it right
Steve Braunias (Herald): The Secret Diary of Plunket and Farrier (paywalled)
Grant Duncan: Newshub’s biased poll reporting
Eric Crampton: Watching Mediawatch

CLIMATE
Timothy Welch (The Conversation): Why giving the Commerce Commission the power to set ‘fair’ fuel prices is unfair on NZ’s climate targets
1News: Shaw on $20m climate payout: NZ has ‘duty to support’ Pacific
Rod Oram (Newsroom): NZ absent on COP 27 agriculture day
Hamish McNicol (NBR): Climate reporting and the law of unintended consequences (paywalled)

OTHER
Philip Matthews (Stuff): Jim Anderton: Hero, rebel or both?
Michelle Duff (Stuff): NZ childcare affordability is the worst in the world, Government discovers
Simon Wilson (Herald): Inside the Auckland mayoral race: How did Wayne Brown win so well and Efeso Collins lose so badly? (paywalled)
Deborah Morris (Stuff): Police error sinks Parliament protester’s trespass charge, exposing loophole
Matthew Slaughter (Stuff): Difficult Conversations: Are we becoming reluctant to speak our minds?
Clive Bibby (Kiwiblog): Let’s have a debate based on the facts
Greg Bruce (Herald): Millennials aren’t real. Nor are Boomers, Zoomers or Gen X-ers (paywalled)

You first have to lose an election on principle if you want to win one on principle.

This was how Labor rationalised the miscalculations that led to its “Don’s Party” disappointment in 1969, followed by the 1972 triumph of the “It’s Time” campaign.

Half a century later, the idea of sticking with unpopular policy seems romantic, unthinkable. Principles are not just old-hat in an era of professionalised politics, but absurd.

Swamped by voter-attitude metrics, modern democratic leaders are not leaders in the traditional sense. Rather, they are followers.

Followers of market researchers and media proprietors who disabuse them of ambitious conceits like national leadership, or anything that might tempt them to make changes based on electoral judgment, the national interest, or even ideology.

Still, a few months ago, one starry-eyed fool (to wit, this author) described the looming 2022 federal election as the most important national choice to be put before voters since that 1972 hinge-point.

If it was an invitation to Labor leader Anthony Albanese to paint in bold brushstrokes, he didn’t receive it.

Instead, Labor’s risk-averse policy presentation has largely mirrored the reform-shy government it seeks to replace. This makes for the least policy-divergent choice in the 50 years since 1972.

The 2022 election more closely resembles a velodrome match-sprint where the two riders have almost stopped on the banked section, each terrified of leading off and being overtaken in the final dash for the line.

Whitlam’s re-imagining
The 1972 comparison gets even harder when you look at former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s first month in office.

He promised to establish diplomatic relations with Peking (now Beijing), following his audacious trip to “Red China” in 1971. Imagine this (or any) opposition making a play of similar foreign policy gravity today.

Whitlam’s bold Australian re-imagining, which historian Stuart McIntyre later characterised as “a nationalism attuned to internationalism”, kick-started a lucrative economic co-dependency that has propelled Australian prosperity to this day. Hungry for commodities and services imports, China’s staggering growth has also insulated Australia through global shocks like the Asian Financial Crisis, Global Financial Crisis, and the covid-19 pandemic.

While the Coalition would no doubt have come to it eventually, Whitlam acted without hesitation or American permission. Crucially, he backed his capacity to explain it to the country, despite the danger of being tagged as soft on communism.

Again, leaders taking decisions and then relying on their persuasive powers to win arguments seems fanciful amid the timidity of contemporary politics.

A shot of adrenaline
In those first days, Whitlam also ended conscription, withdrew from Vietnam, granted independence to Papua New Guinea, and set about ratifying long-deferred international conventions on basic labour conditions, racial non-discrimination, and nuclear weapons proliferation.

With his pared back, don’t-frighten-the-horses agenda, Albanese might have less to do over a whole term, and Whitlam was only getting started.

Before his government crashed, Whitlam would end the White Australia Policy, scrap royal honours, appoint the first women’s adviser, reform draconian divorce laws, champion multiculturalism, dramatically ratchet up funding for the arts and humanities, abolish university fees, revive urban development, and more.

To a slumbering post-war Australia, it was a shot of late 20th Century adrenaline and the results were startling. Australian historian Manning Clark described it as the “end of the Ice Age”.

But in 1975, it ended in ignominy. As McIntyre later observed, “the golden age was over”.

History rhyming, not repeating
So far, the case for equivalence between 1972 and 2022 is not obvious, right?

But what if it is not Labor that now represents the radical option but the status quo? What if changing governments offers the safer, more conventional course for nervous voters? As Mark Twain noted, history doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.

Labor’s 1972 manifesto was inspiring, but it was the urgency with which its modernising promise was articulated after 23 years of Coalition rule that had impatient voters energised. The McMahon Coalition government was a no ideas factory in the lead-up to the 1972 election, although it did not exhibit the insidious corrosive streak of its modern-day equivalent.

This is the rhyme. While the 2022 election is not about the magisterial reform possibilities of an incoming government, it is about the urgent need to rescue longstanding governing norms around transparency, accountability, ministerial standards, trust and the honesty, and of course, the viability of the public service.

It is in this critical sense that the two elections might be compared.

Divide and dither
The radicalism absent from Labor’s 2022 manifesto is made up for in the unspoken but no-less transformative erosion of standards by the government. The Coalition is primarily intent on the political dividends of division, on courting the applause of media vassals, religious conservatives, and a populist Nationals rump.

Morrison’s approach can be described as divide and dither.

It finds its expression in the Coalition’s reflexive recourse to politics over policy — frequently at the direct expense of the national interest such as in the weaponisation of climate change and more recently, the attempts to weaken the outward presentation of domestic bipartisanship on national security.

The former is a classic of the genre. Morrison’s hollow embrace of net zero by 2050 ahead of Glasgow last year was greeted by political insiders as a triumph of prime ministerial skill, when all it really did was expose how utterly pointless the Coalition’s decade-long negation had been.

Moreover, it brought no revision to interim targets nor adjusted any other policy architecture.

Its real aim — in which it was successful — was the neutralisation of a Coalition stance that had morphed into a clear electoral negative.

The latter, national security, was tickled along last Friday in Defence Minister Peter Dutton’s ultra-earnest press conference transparently called to (re)frighten voters about a Chinese “warship” that was “hugging” Australia’s north-western coast at a distance of 400 kilometres.

Manufactured wars and textimonials
Divide and dither revels in manufactured culture wars over transgender teens and identity politics, fumes about supposed attacks on faith, and white-ants efforts to build support for a First Nations Voice in the Constitution.

Witness the government’s pillorying responses to anti-discrimination campaigners with dismissive throw-aways like “all lives matter”.

Divide and dither’s existence was spectacularly laid bare in a series of explosive “textimonials” regarding Morrison’s character from his own colleagues — people much closer to him than voters, including Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce. These described him variously as a “hypocrite and a liar”. A New South Wales Liberal senator called him a “bully with no moral compass”.

It’s there, too, in the vicious campaigns against “fake” independent women – simply for standing for office. In a democracy.

The Liberals’ refusal to acknowledge and address female under-representation has invited the very rebellion it now faces from high-calibre female candidates in safe Liberal seats.

The overall impression is of a government shamelessly enabled by a pseudo-independent media that makes no serious attempt to govern for all Australians.

No change means no consequences
In light of these multiple failures, in opting for no change, Australian voters would be saying there is no cost for governing like this.

The Coalition’s take-out would be — keep misleading and pork-barrelling and fomenting useless culture wars.

Keep stacking boards and cutting taxes for the rich and emaciating the public service. Keep denying an anti-corruption commission even as its need becomes ever-more pressing.

Psychologists would call such a verdict “learned helplessness” — an acceptance that such corruptions are inevitable, and no more than we deserve.

Accountable government, national unity, evidence-based policy, and democratic accountability are all on the ballot at this election.

It is not 1972, but the choice might be equally stark, despite Labor’s timidity.

Dr Mark Kenny, is professor at the Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Indonesia’s popular tourism islands of Bali opened for tourism last week, while Thailand announced that from November 1 vaccinated travellers from 19 countries will be allowed to visit the kingdom including its tourism island of Phuket.

Both those countries’ tourism industry, which is a major revenue earner, has been devastated by more than 18 months of inactivity that have impacted on the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people.

India and Vietnam also announced plans to open the country to vaccinated foreign tourists in November, and Australia will be opening its borders for foreign travel from mid-November for the first time since March 2020.

Countries in the Asia-Pacific region — except for China — are now beginning to grapple with balancing the damage to their economies from covid-19 pandemic by beginning to treat the virus as another flu.

The media may have to play a less adversarial role if this gamble is going to succeed.

October 11 was “Freedom Day” for Australia’s most populous city Sydney when it came out of almost four months of a tough lockdown.

Ironically this is happening while the daily covid-19 infection rates are higher than the figure that triggered the lockdowns in June.

‘It’s not going away’
Yet, New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet told Sky News on October 11: “we’ve got to live alongside the virus, it’s not going away, the best thing that we can do is protect our people (by better health services)”.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, addressing the nation on October 9, said: “Singapore cannot stay locked down and closed off indefinitely. It would not work, and it would be very costly”.

He added, “each time we tighten up, businesses are further disrupted, workers lose jobs, children are deprived of a proper childhood and school life”.

Singapore is coming out of lockdown when it is facing the highest rates of daily infections since the covid-19 outbreak.

Both Singapore and Australia adopted a “zero-covid” policy when the first wave of the pandemic hit, quickly closing the borders, and going into lockdown.

Both were exceptionally successful in controlling the virus and lifting the lockdowns late last year with almost zero covid-19 cases. But, when the more contagious delta virus hit both countries, fear came back forcing them back into lockdowns.

However, PM Lee told Singaporeans that lockdowns had “caused psychological and emotional strain, and mental fatigue for Singaporeans and for everyone else. Therefore, we concluded a few months ago that a “Zero covid” strategy was no longer feasible”.

‘Living with covid-19’
Thus, Singapore has changed its policy to “Living with covid-19”.

In a Facebook posting on October 10, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said: “The phenomenal response from Australians to go and get vaccinated as we’ve seen those vaccination rates rise right across the country, means it’s now time that Australians are able to reclaim their lives. We’re beating covid, and we’re taking our lives back.”

On October 8, Australia’s Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said that though infection rates might still be a bit high, yet less than 1 percent of those infected were in intensive care units (ICUs).

Why didn’t political leaders take this attitude right from the beginning and continue with it? After all the fatality rate of covid-19 has not been that much higher than the seasonal flu in most countries.

True, it was perhaps more contagious according to medical opinion, but fatality rates were not that large in percentage figures.

According to the Worldometer of health statistics, there have been 237.5 million covid-19 infections up to October this year and 214.6 million have recovered fully (90.4 percent) while 4.8 million have died (just over 2 percent).

According to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates, there have been between 39-56 million flu cases, about 700,000 flu hospitalisations recorded in the US during the 2019-2020 flu season up to April 2020.

They also estimate between 24,000 to 62,000 flu deaths during the season. But did the media give these figures on a daily or even a weekly basis?

New global influenza strategy
In March 2019, WHO launched a new global influenza strategy pointing out that each year there is an estimated 1 billion flu cases of which 3-5 million are severe cases, resulting in 290,000 to 650,000 influenza-related respiratory deaths.

This has been happening for many years, but, yet the global media did not create the panic scenario that accompanied covid-19.

Unfortunately, the media’s adversarial reporting culture has helped to create a fear psychosis from the very beginning of the outbreak in early 2020, which may have contributed to millions of deaths by creating anxiety among those diagnosed with covid-19.

During the peak of the delta pandemic in India, many patients died from heart attacks triggered by anxiety. Would they have died if covid-19 were treated as another flu?

In the US out of the 44 million infected with covid-19 only 1.6 percent died. In Brazil from 21.5 million infected, 2.8 percent of them died, while in India out of 34 million infected only 1.3 percent died.

But what did we see in media reports? Piles of dead bodies being burnt in India, from Brazil bodies buried in mass graves by health workers wrapped in safety gear and in the US, people being rushed into ICUs.

They are just a small fraction of those infected.

Bleak picture of sensationalism
I was the co-editor of a book just released by a British publisher that looked at how the media across the world reported the covid-19 outbreak during 2020. It paints a bleak picture of sensationalism and adversarial reporting blended with racism and politicisation.

It all started with the outbreak in Wuhan in January 2020 when the global media transmitted unverified video clips of people dropping dead in the streets and dead bodies lying in pavements. Along with the focus on “unhygienic” wet markets in China this helped to project an image of China as a threat to the world.

It contributed to the fear psychosis that was built up by the media tinged with racism and politicisation.

If we are to live with covid and other flu viruses, greater investments need to be made in public health.

In Australia, health experts are talking about boosting hospital bed and ICU capacities to deal with the new policy of living with covid, and they have also warned of a shortage of health professionals, especially to staff ICUs.

What about if the media focus on these as national security priorities? Rather than giving daily death rates and sensational stories of people dying from covid — do we give daily death rates from heart attacks or suicide?

We should start discussing more about how to create sustainable safe communities as we recover from the pandemic, and that includes better investments in public health.

We need a journalism culture that is less adversarial and more tuned into promoting cooperation and community harmony.

Kalinga Seneviratne is co-editor of COVID-19, Racism and Politicization: Media in the Midst of a Pandemic published in August 2021 by Cambridge Scholars Publishers. IDN is the flagship agency of the Non-profit International Press Syndicate. This article is republished in partnership with IDN.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has called on the Thai authorities to shed all possible light on the disappearance of Truong Duy Nhat, a famous Vietnamese blogger who went missing in Bangkok last month, one day after going to the local office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to apply for refugee status.

RSF is concerned that Vietnamese agents may have kidnapped Truong Duy Nhat on January 26 , who is from the city of Danang, in central Vietnam. The Thai police say they are not holding him.

More than ten days have gone by since anyone heard from him, RSF reports.

Other Vietnamese bloggers who have applied for refugee status in Bangkok say they think he was abducted while in a shopping mall in suburban Bangkok, according to Radio Free Asia, one of the media outlets for which Nhat works.

“We urge the Thai authorities to make every effort to shed light on Truong Duy Nhat’s extremely disturbing disappearance,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.

“If the Thai authorities prove not to have been involved, this would mean that Vietnamese agents are no longer bothered by international law and violate a partner country’s sovereignty in order to pursue their critics. This sends an absolutely terrifying message to the community of Vietnamese bloggers who have sought refuge in Bangkok.”

-Partners-

Network of sources
Nhat’s disappearance is all the more disturbing because he is widely respected as a blogger, even within certain circles of the ruling Communist Party in Hanoi.

Bui Thanh Hieu, a blogger who has found asylum in Germany, wrote on Facebook that he suspected that Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc may have ordered Nhat’s abduction.

“I think the prime minister wants Nhat arrested at all costs because he is in possession of compromising information about the prime minister’s clan in Quang Nam province,” Hieu wrote.

Quang Nam province adjoins Danang, Nhat’s home town, where the blogger has many sources to help him with his investigative reporting.

Place of refuge
Nhat used to work for state media outlets, including Danang police newspapers, until 2010, when he launched his own blog, Mot Goc Nhin Khac (Another Viewpoint), in order to be able to report and write with complete freedom.

He was arrested in 2013 and sentenced to two years in prison for “abusing democratic freedoms” in his blog posts. RSF included him in its list of 100 “information heroes” in 2014.

In the course of the Vietnamese government’s two-year-old crackdown on citizen-journalists, many of them have found refuge in Bangkok.

Vietnam is ranked 175th out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2018 World Press Freedom Index, the lowest ranking in Southeast Asia. Thailand is ranked 140th.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Prime Minister Peter O’Neill says all 40 Maserati executive vehicles being delivered to Papua New Guinea for the use of world leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit next month will be sold to the private sector by public tender after use.

He confirmed this would be conducted in a transparent process right after the APEC leaders’ summit on November 17-18 as frustrated opposition MPs have called for a national strike this Thursday and Friday.

Opposition MP Bryan Kramer announced on social media he had spoken to Oro Governor Garry Juffa and East Sepik Governor Allan Bird at the weekend. They agreed to call the strike as a “nonviolent act of defiance”.

READ MORE: Uproar as PNG buys 40 Maseratis for APEC summit

“We agreed that we are sick to death of seeing our people suffer while our own members of Parliament who were mandated to fight for our people’s welfare are instead colluding with overseas opportunists only to steal from our people,” Kramer said.

“We are disgusted. We have heard your views and expressions on social media and we share the same concerns about the corruption and scandals led by the O’Neill government.

“I asked for the support from governors Juffa and Bird and we have agreed that enough is enough. If we continue to sit back and watch you struggle to put your children through school in the hope of a job that will never exist, if the economy continues as it is, how can we call ourselves leaders?

“The degree of mismanagement and corruption is overwhelmingly out of control. If we are to wait any longer there will be nothing left to fight for.”

Former PM’s backing
A former prime minister, Sir Mekere Morauta, MP for Moresby North-West, also supported the strike call in protest at what he branded the “continuing corruption” by the O’Neill government.

“Astonishing revelations in the last couple of days about the crooked contract to buy luxury Maserati cars for APEC, and then secretly sell them to private sector cronies, is the last straw,” he said.

Prime Minister O’Neill said the government was doing nothing secret but was prepared to host a successful APEC summit next month.

When asked by Loop PNG to give a response to a statement by Australian politician Pauline Hanson about the 40 Maseratis, he said he did not respond to “racist” Australian politicians who had no idea about Papua New Guinea.

The prime minister added there had been no cuts to the PNG health budget as speculated on but the government had increased spending to combat the polio outbreak.

Increasing awareness
O’Neill said the government was also increasing awareness that parents must allow their children to be immunised early to avoid such diseases.

He added that like all previous events hosted by governments in the past, all vehicles would be sold to the private sector in a public tender.

The prime minister said all APEC hosting nations, including Australia, had provided appropriate standard vehicles for all leaders in the past.

O’Neill said it would be inappropriate for the country to transport national leaders in landcruisers.

One Nation Party Leader and Queensland Senator Pauline Hanson said she was furious with the government of PNG over the purchase of the Maserati vehicles, and called for the withdrawal of Australian aid.

The minister responsible for APEC, Justin Tkatchenko, described Hanson’s statement as not only defaming the country but a “total disgrace”.

Previous practice
Theckla Gunga of EMTV News reports: the practice of importing expensive vehicles for hosting APEC leaders’ summits has been adopted by host countries in the past.

In 2017, the Vietnamese government, through a public-private-partnership, imported Audi vehicles to use during the APEC leaders’ week.

Two years earlier, the Philippines imported 200 BMW sedans to ferry world leaders and delegates during the APEC summit.

After the meetings, those vehicles were sold to the public, or bought by the private sector.

The Pacific Media Centre has a content sharing arrangement with EM TV News.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A global human rights watchdog claims that Vietnam’s human rights record could jeopardise a free trade deal with the European Union.

A warning letter by Human Rights Watch, dated September 17, sent by 32 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) was addressed to the EU Trade Commissioner, Cecilia Malmström.

It called for a “push for robust progress in Vietnam’s human rights record ahead of the possible ratification of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA)”.

“. . . loose provisions on national security have been widely used to suppress peaceful dissent and jail scores of human rights defenders. . .,” the letter said.

READ MORE: Vietnam censorship extends to popular, official news website

The letter claimed that there was a need for a series of targets that the country should meet before the agreement was handed over to the European Parliament for its approval.

The ratification of the EVFTA agreement is slated to happen at the end of this year and would rid the country of at least 99 percent of customs duties paid on exports into Europe.

Censorship has lately become a growing concern.

Censoring reality
The words Bachelor: Vietnam contestant Minh Thu uttered to Bachelor Quoc Trung on the episode which aired on September 21 said: “I went into this competition to find love, and I’ve found that love for myself, but it isn’t with you. It’s with someone else”.

While participating in the competition over time, Thu had fallen in love with another woman, fellow contestant Truc Nhu, and they left the programme together.

“In Vietnamese pop culture, there’s a lot of people that are rumoured to be LGBT or people that hint at it. . . So to see a moment that’s unequivocal, where someone is saying that they love someone else . . . I think it’s going to be very powerful to young people,” says the shows story producer Anh-Thu Nguyen.

At this point in the history of Vietnam, few are willing to come out of the proverbial closet – in more ways than one.

Despite this, censors allowed the confession to air almost completely, a move surprising many viewers and commentators.

Vietnam, a Communist country since 1976, has seen much censorship over the years and its culture, it appears, has been no different.

Bachelor: Vietnam, currently in its first season, has faced issues of potential censorship since its inception. According to the show’s executive producer, Anh Tran, it was difficult to sell to networks.

Many of the traditional parts of the United States’ version of the show had to be edited or cut out entirely to avoid censure from censors.

The rose ceremony, for example, has to be carefully edited to avoid showing a line-up of women vying for a man – the main plot point for the show.

Censorship of culture
Vietnam is ruled by the Communist Party, and censorship is seemingly common in the cultural realm as singer Mai Khoi could attest.

In March, the woman who has been dubbed as the country’s own Lady Gaga or Pussy Riot, was detained at the airport, and “interrogated for eight hours”.

Copies of her latest album, Dissent, were confiscated, she claimed in a Facebook post.
She has written songs about the women’s movement and LGBT rights. She also ran – unsuccessfully – for public office in the country. She now performs in secret in her own country.

The country has been a Communist nation since the 1960s, and censorship has long been a part of that.

Last month, Reuters reported that a court had jailed an activist for 12 years in prison and a further five years’ house arrest.

Nguyen Trung Truc, 44, was – according to a statement given by police – among a group called “Brotherhood for Democracy” in 2013. The group, police said, conducted “anti-government activities” with the aim of creating a system of “multi-party democracy” in Vietnam.

‘Hurt the prestige’
A second man, Bui Manh Dong, 40, was convicted over his comments on September 28.
Police said that Dong had “hurt the prestige and leading role of the [Communist] party and the state”.

Dong, and one other man, Doan Knanh Vinh Quang, were accused of encouraging people to protest against government policies or write posts that were critical of the government.

Vietnam has a high level of social media use among its citizens yet the country’s Communist government has introduced a new law which, according to Amnesty International, would force tech companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook to hand over data from their users.

“This decision has potentially devastating consequences for freedom of expression in Viet Nam,” said Clare Algar, international director of global operations for Amnesty International, in June.

“With the sweeping powers it grants the government to monitor online activity, this. . . means there is now no safe place left. . . for people to speak freely”.

Last year, it was reported that the country had built up a force of “cyber-troops” to tackle what they call “wrongful views”.

Jessica Marshall is a student journalist on the Postgraduate Diploma in Communication Studies course at AUT. She is filing articles in the Asia-Pacific Journalism Studies paper.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

An alarming number of “targeted” journalists being killed and West Papua media for independence were just some of the topics covered in wide-ranging seminar by the director of the Pacific Media Centre last night.

Professor David Robie called for the media, universities and journalism schools to take their Pacific “backyard” more seriously and not just wait for crises to happen.

The seminar was in marking May 3 – World Press Freedom Day. This year’s conference is in Accra, Ghana.

Dr Robie cited the number of journalists killed while working in 2017 and called journalism an increasingly “dangerous occupation”.

“Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF) [Reporters Without Borders] statistics showed 65 journalists were killed worldwide in 2017,” Dr Robie said. Of the 65 journalists killed, 7 of these people were so-called citizen journalists.

This number of casualties varied between media freedom monitoring agencies depending on the definitions of journalists and media workers counted in the statistics, he said.

Although this statistic showed a drop from the previous year, the growth of “hatred” for media and targeting of journalists was a worsening problem.

“This is a dire situation that is getting worse.” 

On top of the killings, the Paris-based statistics showed that 326 journalists were detained in prison and a further 54 were being held hostage. 

Dr Robie said use of the term “citizen journalist” was problematic, as it gave an impression of untrained journalists working without an ethical basis. In fact, many professional journalists were becoming “citizen” journalists tactically and using social media to defeat mainstream media “gags” such as relating to the Melanesian region West Papua inside Indonesia.

“There are more and more independent journalists that are disillusioned” and publishing untold stories on their own blogs.

One such journalist is Papua New Guinea’s Scott Waide, with whom Pacific Media Centre is collaborating with, published many articles by independent journalists and civil society people on his blog My Land, My Country.

A Filipino radio journalist, Edmond Sestoso, was shot last Monday – three days before Press Freedom Day – and died the next day. He was murdered in a drive-by scenario by a gunman on a motorcycle. According to Dr Robie, it is a “very common way of doing it” in the Philippines.

World Press Freedom Day 2017
In 2017, Dr Robie was invited to go to the week-long UNESCO World Press Freedom Day media conference in Jakarta, Indonesia.

He was one of just two New Zealanders at the conference out of the 1500 people attending the WPFD conference. He spoke a journalist safety academic conference at WPFD but was also a guest keynote speaker at an alternative “Free Press in West Papua” conference organised by Indonesia’s Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI).

Dr Robie said it was “astonishing” that were not more people from New Zealand present at WPFD and said it shows how “appalling” New Zealand’s interest in international affairs is with an information gap in coverage of Asia-Pacific issues. The other New Zealander present was Mary Major, executive director of the New Zealand Media Council.

Dr Robie described the week as “challenging” and “inspiring”.

“I was representing AUT university and also entering a fraught situation.”

Independent Indonesian journalists were planning to protest against the treatment of West Papua and make a showcase stand before the world’s press, said Dr Robie.

At the WPFD, there was a tight military and police security cordon which kept out West Papua protesters and prevented conference participants from joining the protests in solidarity.

While en route to Jakarta, Dr Robie was also invited to speak at a conference hosted by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, the last investigative journalism unit at an Australian university, which was closing under protest after 25 years on the “frontline”.

He was able to address West Papua there too.

“I’m an educator and a journalist….I have a responsibility to share my knowledge with as many people as I can about issues,” said Dr Robie, who is author of Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, mayhem and human rights in the Pacific.

West Papua plight ‘censored’

Dr Robie discussed Facebook recently wrongly “censoring” a 1995 photo of an armed West Papuan OPM guerilla and fellow tribespeople in traditional nambas (penis sheaths), pointing to the Pacific Media Centre coverage that sparked an RNZ Mediawatch story on the issue.

Photojournalist Ben Bohane, who has extensively covered conflict issues in the Asia-Pacific region, wrote a two-page article in the Vanuatu Daily Post in response to a piece about China and Vanuatu by The Sydney Morning Herald that had speculated about a “naval base” plan for a wharf aid project at Luganville, Espiritu Santo. Dr Robie said the Australian article was  “scaremongering.”

“Ben Bohane’s article said China was not the real concern,” he said. “The real threat in terms of stability and security is Indonesia, for which New Zealand media have a blindspot.”

When the PMC republished the article on its current affairs website Asia Pacific Report, Facebook links were removed. “I got a message saying the picture breached Facebook’s community standards.” While the Facebook “block” did not affect the actual article itself, Dr Robie said it limited the reach of the important article.

Dr Robie said he believed the photo censorship had more to do with “politics” rather than “nudity” and was undoubtedly an attempt by Indonesian sources to curb the debate regarding West Papua.

“It is not the picture that is the real issue,” said Dr Robie. He quoted from Ben Bohane’s latest message saying the cenorship was ongoing in spite of Facebook saying it had lifted the block.

It is not the first time Facebook has censored an iconic photo that illustrates dire situations in the Asia-Pacific region. Dr Robie pointed to how Mediawatch raised the issue of how the social media platform in 2016 censored images of the “napalm girl” taken during the Vietnam War in 1973. This caused an international storm of protest.

WPFD in Indonesia – an irony
Dr Robie pointed out the irony over Jakarta hosting the WPFD 2017 conference in light of censorship and repressive actives by security forces in West Papua.

According to Dr Robie, Indonesia has a vibrant “plurality” of voices but forces were seeking to radicalise people, along with targeting journalists.

While President Joko Widodo had changed policy in 2015 to “allow foreign journalists into” West Papua after he was elected in 2014, not much had really changed. Arrests and deportations were continuing.

“It’s very tightly controlled by the bureaucracy and security authorities,” said Dr Robie.

He highlighted the message from critics and researchers of a “secret genocide” in West Papua.

“The state of mainstream international media is a big part of how West Papua is ignored. There is a big difference when you watch some news media that take a more independent stance, such as Al Jazeera.”

He praised Al Jazeera’s Dutch journalist in Jakarta, Step Vaessen, for her coverage.

The penalties for showing support for West Papuan independence is severe “15 year prison sentence if you raise the banned Morning Star independence flag – even wearing a t-shirt like I am wearing tonight with the flag on can get you into trouble,” Dr Robie said.

“It is a very serious situation for West Papuans.”

“They believe their independence was declared in 1962 and despite that, Indonesian forces invaded.

“Western countries have become persuaded that West Papua has become part of Indonesia, making the situation a wrong that has never been righted.”

NZ media coverage
While the situation is still dire, there has been some sporadic New Zealand coverage of the West Papua situation, said Dr Robie.

New Zealander Karen Abplanalp, who researched journalist access into West Papua for her masters degree, assisted Māori Television in a reporting mission with Adrian Stevenon to West Papua in 2015. The crew had to “dress” up the assignment bid with the authorities by saying it was a cultural showcase and had a nice side report about a kumara aid project in the Highlands.

Johnny Blades and Koroi Hawkins from RNZ also visited West Papua that year and did a rare interview with Lukas Enembe, the governor of Papua.

Dr Robie said New Zealand media covered disasters, coups and cyclones, while ignoring many of the social justice and development stories that were “crying out to be covered” in the Asia-Pacific region.

“Universities have responsibilities to shed light through research,” concluded Dr Robie.

He called for Indonesia to genuinely “open the door” to journalists and non-government agencies to visit West Papua, and for a “real” UN referendum on self-determination for the Papuans.

Peace and human rights activist Maire Leadbeater said the presentation was enlightening and covered many topics.

“It was great, I really enjoyed it. Dr Robie covered a lot of bases,” Leadbeater said.

Leadbeater is due to have a book published next month about the issue, See No Evil: New Zealand’s betrayal of the people of West Papua.

“The book will be a probe into New Zealand’s diplomacy that hasn’t been done before.”

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

United States Defence Secretary James Mattis has watched Indonesian special forces smash concrete blocks with their heads, walk barefoot across a flaming log, and drink blood from still-slithering bodies of snakes, reports New York Magazine.

The demonstration came at the end of a three-day visit to Indonesia this week that was part of Mattis’s Southeast Asian tour.

His next stop is Vietnam, where authorities will have trouble following this act, writes Adam K. Raymond.

After several days of meetings, Mattis was apparently ready for the show yesterday.

“The snakes! Did you see them tire them out and then grab them? The way they were whipping them around — a snake gets tired very quickly,” the man known as “Mad Dog” told reporters.

‘Mission Impossible’
The press traveling with the retired US Marine Corps general was only expecting a hostage rescue drill, Reuters reports, but the Indonesians delivered much more:

Wearing a hood to blind him, one knife-wielding Indonesian soldier slashed away at a cucumber sticking out of his colleague’s mouth, coming just inches from striking his nose with the long blade. …

-Partners-

At the end of the demonstration, to the tune of the movie “Mission Impossible,” the Indonesian forces carried out a hostage rescue operation, deploying stealthily from helicopters – with police dogs. The dogs intercepted the gunman.

“Even the dogs coming out of those helicopters knew what to do,” Mattis said after the show.

A Washington Post video clip of the Indonesian special forces event.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz