Since the arrival of Zionism in Palestine, the impulse of the Palestinians has not been about violence or revenge. The impulse remains the return to normal and natural life, writes Ilan Pappé.

ANALYSIS: By Ilan Pappé

“When we revolt, it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.”

— Franz Fanon

Since the 1948 Nakba and arguably before, Palestine has not seen levels of violence as high as those experienced since October 7, 2023. But we need to address how this violence is being situated, treated, and judged.

Indeed, mainstream media often portrays Palestinian violence as terrorism while depicting Israeli violence as self-defence. Rarely is Israeli violence labelled excessive.

Meanwhile, international legal institutions hold both sides equally responsible for this violence, which they classify as war crimes.

Both perspectives are flawed. The first perspective wrongly differentiates between the “immoral” and “unjustified” violence of Palestinians and Israel’s “right to defend itself.”

The second perspective, which assigns blame to both sides, provides a misguided and ultimately harmful framework for understanding the current situation — likely the most violent chapter in Palestine’s modern history.

And all of these perspectives overlook the crucial context necessary to understand the violence that erupted on October 7.

This is not merely a conflict between two violent parties, nor is it simply a clash between a terrorist organisation and a state defending itself.

Rather, it represents a chapter in the ongoing decolonisation of historic Palestine, which began in 1929 and continues today. Only in the future will we know whether October 7 marked an early stage in this decolonisation process or one of its final phases.

Throughout history, decolonisation has been a violent process, and the violence of decolonisation has not been confined to one side only. Apart from a few exceptions where very small, colonised islands were evicted “voluntarily” by colonial empires, decolonisation has not been a pleasant consensual affair by which colonisers end decades, if not centuries, of oppression.

But for this to be our entry point to discuss Hamas, Israel, and the various positions held towards them in the world, one has to acknowledge the colonialist nature of Zionism and therefore recognise the Palestinian resistance as an anti-colonialist struggle — a framework negated totally by American administrations and other Western countries since the birth of Zionism, and so therefore also by other Western countries.

Framing the conflict as a struggle between the colonisers and the colonised helps detect the origin of the violence and shows that there is no effective way of stopping it without addressing its origins.

The root of the violence in Palestine is the evolvement of Zionism in the late 19th century into a settler colonial project.

Like previous settler colonial projects, the main violent impulse of the movement — and later the state that was established — was and is to eliminate the indigenous population. When elimination is not achieved by violence, the solution is always to use more extraordinary violence.

Therefore, the only scenario in which a settler colonial project can end its violent treatment of the indigenous people is when it ends or collapses. Its inability to achieve the absolute elimination of the native population will not deter it from constantly attempting to do so through an incremental policy of elimination or genocide.

The anti-colonial impulse, or propensity, to employ violence is existential — unless we believe that human beings prefer to live as occupied or colonised people.

The colonisers have an option not to colonise or eliminate but rarely cease from doing so without being forced to by the violence of the colonised or by outside pressure from external powers.

Indeed, as is in the case of Israel and Palestine, the best way to avoid violence and counter-violence is to force the settler colonial project to cease through pressure from the outside.

The historical record is worth recollecting to give credence to our claim that the violence of Israel must be judged differently — in moral and political terms — from that of the Palestinians.

This, however, does not mean that condemnation for violation of international law can only be directed towards the coloniser; of course not.

It is an analysis of the history of violence in historical Palestine that contextualises the events of October 7 and the genocide in Gaza and indicates a way to end it.

The history of violence in Modern Palestine: 1882-2000
The arrival of the first group of Zionist settlers in Palestine in 1882 was not, by itself, the first act of violence. The violence of the settlers was epistemic, meaning that the violent removal of the Palestinians by the settlers had already been written about, imagined, and coveted upon their arrival in Palestine — debunking the infamous “land without people” myth.

To translate the imagined removal into reality, the Zionist movement had to wait for the occupation of Palestine by Britain in 1918.

A few years later in the mid-1920s, with assistance from the British mandatory government, 11 villages were ethnically cleansed following the purchase of the regions Marj Ibn Amer and Wadi Hawareth by the Zionist movement from absentee landlords in Beirut and a landowner in Jaffa.

This had never happened before in Palestine. Landowners, whoever they were, did not evict villages that had been there for centuries since Ottoman law enabled land transactions.

This was the origin and the first act of systemic violence in the attempt to dispossess the Palestinians.

Another form of violence was the strategy of “Hebrew Labour” meant to drive out Palestinians from the labour market. This strategy, and the ethnic cleansing, pauperised the Palestinian countryside, leading to forced emigration to towns that could not provide work or proper housing.

It was only in 1929, when these violent actions were coupled with a discourse on constructing a third temple in place of Haram al-Sharif, that the Palestinians responded with violence for the first time.

This was not a coordinated response, but a spontaneous and desperate one against the bitter fruits of the Zionist colonisation of Palestine.

Seven years later, when Britain permitted more settlers to arrive and supported the formation of a nascent Zionist state with its own army, the Palestinians launched a more organised campaign.

This was the first uprising, lasting three years (1936-1939), known as the Arab Revolt. During this period, the Palestinian elite finally recognised Zionism as an existential threat to Palestine and its people.

The main Zionist paramilitary group collaborating with the British army in quelling the revolt was known as the Haganah, meaning “The Defence,” and hence the Israeli narrative to depict any act of aggression against Palestinians as self-defence — a concept reflected in the name of the Israeli army, the Israel Defence Forces.

From the British Mandate period to today, this military power was used to take over land and markets. It was deployed as a “defence” force against the attacks of the anti-colonialist movement and as such was not different from any other coloniser in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The difference is that in most instances of modern history where colonialism has come to an end, the actions of the colonisers are now viewed retrospectively as acts of aggression rather than self-defence.

The great Zionist success has been to commodify their aggression as self-defence and the Palestinian armed struggle as terrorism. The British government, at least until 1948, regarded both acts of violence as terrorism but allowed the worst violence to take place against the Palestinians in 1948 when it watched the first stage of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Between December 1947 and May 1948, when Britain was still responsible for law and order, the Zionist forces urbicided, that is obliterated, the main towns of Palestine and the villages around it. This was more than terror; this was a crime against humanity.

After completing the second stage of the ethnic cleansing between May and December 1948, through the most violent means that Palestine has witnessed for centuries, half of Palestine’s population was forcefully expelled, half of its villages destroyed, as well as most of its towns.

Israeli historians would later claim that “the Arabs” wanted to throw the Jews into the sea. The only people who were literally thrown into the sea — and drowned — were those expelled by the Zionist forces in Jaffa and Haifa.

Israeli violence continued after 1948 but was answered sporadically by Palestinians in an attempt to build a liberation movement.

It began with refugees trying to retrieve what was left of their husbandry and crops in the fields, later accompanied by Fedayeen attacking military installations and civilian places. It only gelled into a significant enterprise in 1968, when the Fatah Movement took over the Arab League’s PLO.

The pattern before 1967 is familiar — the dispossessed used violence in their struggle, but on a limited scale, while the Israeli army retaliated with overwhelming, indiscriminate violence, such as the massacre of the village of Qibya in October 1953 where Ariel Sharon’s unit 101 murdered 69 Palestinian villagers, many of them blown up within their own homes.

No group of Palestinians have been spared from Israeli violence. Those who became Israeli citizens were subjected, until 1966, to the most violent form of oppression: military rule. This system routinely employed violence against its subjects, including abuse, house demolitions, arbitrary arrests, banishment, and killings. Among these atrocities was the Kafr Qassem massacre in October 1956, where Israeli border police killed 49 Palestinian villagers.

This same violent system was transited to the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip after the June 1967 War. For 19 years, the violence of the occupation was tolerated by the occupied until the mostly non-violent First Intifada in December 1987. Israel responded with brutality and violence that left 1,200 Palestinians dead, 300 of them children — 120,000 were injured and 1,800 homes were demolished. 180 Israelis were killed.

The pattern here continued — an occupied people, disillusioned with their own leadership and the indifference of the region and the world, rose in a non-violent revolt, only to be met with the full, brutal force of the coloniser and occupier.

Another pattern also emerges. The Intifada triggered a renewed interest in Palestine — as has the Hamas attack on October 7 — and produced a “peace process”, the Oslo Accords that raised the hopes of ending the occupation but instead, it provided immunity to the occupier to continue its occupation.

The frustration led, inevitably, to a more violent uprising in October 2000. It also shifted popular support from those leaders who still put their faith in the diplomatic way of ending occupation to those who were willing to continue the armed struggle against it — the political Islamic groups.

Violence in 21st century Palestine
Hamas and Islamic Jihad enjoy great support because of their choice of continuing to fight the occupation, not because of their theocratic vision of a future Caliphate or their particular wish to make the public space more religious.

The horrific pendulum continued. The Second Intifada was met by a more brutal Israeli response.

For the first time, Israel used F-16 bombers and Apache helicopters against the civilian population, alongside battalions of tanks and artillery that led to the 2002 Jenin massacre.

The brutality was directed from above to compensate for the humiliating withdrawal from southern Lebanon forced upon the Israeli army by Hezbollah in the summer of 2000 — the Second Intifada broke out in October 2000.

The direct violence against the occupied people from 2000 took also the form of intensive colonisation and Judaisation of the West Bank and Greater Jerusalem area.

This campaign was translated into the expropriation of Palestinian lands, encircling the Palestinian areas with apartheid walls, and giving a free license to the settlers to perpetrate attacks on Palestinians in the occupied territories and East Jerusalem.

In 2005, Palestinian civil society tried to offer the world a different kind of struggle through the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement – a non-violent struggle based on a call to the international community to put a stop to the Israeli colonialist violence, which has not been heeded, so far, by governments.

Instead, Israeli brutality on the ground increased and the Gaza resistance in particular fought back resiliently to the point that forced Israel to evict its settlers and soldiers from there in 2005.

However, the withdrawal did not liberate the Gaza Strip, it transformed from being a colonised space into becoming a killing field in which a new form of violence was introduced by Israel.

The colonising power moved from ethnic cleansing to genocide in its attempt to deal with the Palestinian refusal, in particular in the Gaza Strip, to live as a colonised people in the 21st century.

Since 2006, Hamas and Islamic Jihad have used violence in response to what they view as ongoing genocide by Israel against the people of the Gaza Strip. This violence has also been directed at the civilian population in Israel.

Western politicians and journalists often overlooked the indirect and long-term catastrophic effects of these policies on the Gaza population, including the destruction of health infrastructure and the trauma experienced by the 2.2 million people living in the Gaza ghetto.

As it did in 1948, Israel alleges that all its actions are defensive and retaliatory in response to Palestinian violence. In essence, however, Israeli actions since 2006 have not been retaliatory.

Israel initiated violent operations driven by the wish to continue the incomplete 1948 ethnic cleansing that left half of Palestinians inside historic Palestine and millions of others on Palestine’s borders. The eliminatory policies, as brutal as they were, were not successful in this respect; the desperate bouts of Palestinian resistance have instead been used as a pretext to complete the elimination project.

And the cycle continues. When Israel elected an extreme right-wing government in November 2022, Israeli violence was not restricted to Gaza. It appeared everywhere in historical Palestine. In the West Bank, the escalating violence from soldiers and settlers led to incremental ethnic cleansing, particularly in the southern Hebron mountains and the Jordan Valley. This resulted in an increase in killings, including those of teenagers, as well as a rise in arrests without trial.

Since November 2022, a different form of violence has plagued the Palestinian minority living in Israel. This community faces daily terror from criminal gangs that clash with each other, resulting in the murder of one or two community members each day. The police often ignore these issues. Some of these gangs include former collaborators with the occupation who were relocated to Palestinian areas following the Oslo agreement and maintain connections with the Israeli secret service.

Additionally, the new government has exacerbated tensions around the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, permitting more frequent and aggressive incursions into the Haram al-Sharif by politicians, police, and settlers.

It is too difficult to know yet whether there was a clear strategy behind the Hamas attack on October 7, or whether it went according to plan or not, whatever that plan may be. However, 17 years under Israeli blockade and the particularly violent Israeli government of November 2022 added to their determination to try a more drastic and daring form of anti-colonialist struggle for liberation.

Whatever we think about October 7, and we do not have yet a full picture, it was part of a liberation struggle. We may raise both moral questions about Hamas’ actions as well as questions of efficacy; liberation struggles throughout history have had their moments when one could raise such questions and even criticism.

But we cannot forget the source of violence that forced the pastoral people of Palestine after 120 years of colonisation to adopt armed struggle alongside non-violent methods.

On July 19, 2024, the International Court of Justice issued a significant ruling regarding the status of the West Bank, which went largely unnoticed. The court affirmed that the Gaza Strip is organically connected to the West Bank, and therefore, under international law, Israel remains the occupying power in Gaza. This means that actions against Israel by the people of Gaza are considered part of their right to resist occupation.

Once again, under the guise of retaliation and revenge, Israeli violence following October 7 bears the marks of its previous exploitation of cycles of violence.

This includes using genocide as a means to address Israel’s “demographic” issue — essentially, how to control the land of historical Palestine without its Palestinian inhabitants. By 1967, Israel had taken all of historical Palestine, but the demographic reality thwarted the goal of complete dispossession.

Ironically, Israel established the Gaza Strip in 1948 as a receptor for hundreds of thousands of refugees, “willing” to concede 2% of historical Palestine to remove a significant number of Palestinians expelled by its army during the Nakba.

This particular refugee camp has proven more challenging to Israel’s plans to de-Arabize Palestine than any other area, due to the resilience and resistance of its people.

Any attempt to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza must be made in two ways. First, immediate action is needed to stop the violence through a ceasefire and, ideally, international sanctions on Israel. Second, it is crucial to prevent the next phase of the genocide, which could target the West Bank. This requires the continuation and intensification of the global solidarity movement’s campaign to pressure governments and policymakers into compelling Israel to end its genocidal policies.

Since the late 19th century and the arrival of Zionism in Palestine, the impulse of the Palestinians has not been about violence or revenge. The impulse remains the return to normal and natural life, a right that has been denied to the Palestinians for more than a century, not only by Zionism and Israel but by the powerful alliance that allowed and immunised the project of the dispossession of Palestine.

This is not a wish to romanticise or idealise Palestinian society. It was, and would continue to be, a typical society in a region where tradition and modernity often coexist in a complex relationship, and where collective identities can sometimes lead to divisions, especially when external forces seek to exploit these differences.

However, pre-Zionist Palestine was a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews coexisted peacefully, and where most people experienced violence only rarely — likely less frequently than in many parts of the Global North.

Violence as a permanent and massive aspect of life can only be removed when its source is removed. In the case of Palestine, it is the ideology and praxis of the Israeli settler state, not the existential struggle of the colonised Palestinian people.

Ilan Pappé is an Israeli historian and socialist activist. He is a professor of history at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, director of the university’s European Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. He is also the author of the bestselling The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (Oneworld) and many other books. Republished with permission by the author from The New Arab.

This article was first published on Café Pacific.

Green Party co-leader James Shaw has compared the language of New Zealand First leader Winston Peters to former US president Donald Trump, saying it may be emboldening violence against candidates in Aotearoa NZ’s election campaign.

It comes after several candidates from different parties have spoken out about being targeted, including a home invasion on Te Pāti Māori’s youngest candidate, an assault on a Labour candidate, and another Labour candidate saying she has faced the “worst comments and vitriol” this campaign.

Te Pāti Māori candidate Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke, whose home was ram raided and invaded, put the blame on what she called race-baiting from right-wing parties.

Peters told Newshub Nation that notion was wrong, and accused Te Pāti Māori of being a racist party.

But Shaw — who himself was assaulted in 2019 — suggested Peters could be empowering and emboldening extremists.

“It makes me really angry. Because political leaders, through the things we say create an air of permissiveness for that kind of extreme language and now physical violence to take place and it’s not too dissimilar to what we saw in the United States under Donald Trump,” he said.

“Half of the argument about Trump was whether he personally intervened to make those things happen and at one level it doesn’t matter, he created an atmosphere where these extremists felt empowered and emboldened to kind of enact their kind of crazy, racist, misogynist fantasies.

Lead to physical violence
“And that did lead to physical violence there and it’s leading to physical violence here too.”

However, Shaw told RNZ he was not surprised given the “misogynist and racist rhetoric”, which he said had been at least in part been given permission by political parties in this election campaign.

“[It] has created a situation where that kind of online hate and violent language is only one or two steps from actual acts of physical violence and now you’re starting to see those manifest. It is really worrying.

“I think all of us have a responsibility to try and create an atmosphere for democracy to take place, which is respectful, where people can have different opinions and for that to be okay.

“And I think that at the moment we’re seeing a rise in this kind of culture or language which is imported from overseas, that is not just unhelpful but downright dangerous.”

Te Pāti Māori said the break-in at Maipi-Clarke’s house was yet another example of political extremism in New Zealand.

Co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer said some right-wing politicians were emboldening racist behaviour and needed to take responsibility.

‘Harmful inciting’
“We have seen a harmful inciting, a very harmful emboldening of extremism, this is an example of that.

“We’ve had it with our billboards – they’ve been so destroyed that we haven’t been able to afford to replace a lot of them now. It’s just been disgusting, the extent of racism.”

This year’s election had brought some of the worst abuse Te Pāti Māori had ever experienced, she said.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters claimed of Maipi-Clarke’s incident that “it couldn’t have been a home invasion” and he would answer more questions about the case when he knew all the facts.

“As for the first one [alleged assault on Labour’s Angela Roberts], violence of that sort is just not acceptable, full stop.”

He believed the time for candidates was worse was during the Rogernomics period of the 1980s.

“With respect, I can recall during the period of Rogernomics, there was a full scale fight going on inside the Labour Party convention.”

Minorities persecuted
Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins — who has vowed to call out racism — said a number of parties were deliberately trying to persecute minorities and it was reprehensible.

Assaulting candidates or threatening their safety “shows total contempt for the very principle of democracy”, he said.

He had made it clear to all Labour’s candidates that if they thought their physical safety might be at risk, they should not do that activity, Hipkins said.

“I think there has been more racism and misogyny in this election than we’ve seen in previous elections.”

Hipkins said he had respect for women and Māori who put themselves forward in elected office, but they should never have to put up with the level of abuse that they have had to in this campaign.

National Party leader Christopher Luxon told reporters his party had referred several incidents to the police too.

Luxon said he condemned threats and violence on political candidates, or their family and property, as well as all forms of racism.

Number of serious incidents
“It’s entirely wrong. We’ve had a number of serious incidents that we’ve referred to the police as well, over the course of this campaign.

“I think it’s important for all New Zealanders to understand that politicians are putting themselves forward, you may disagree with their politics, you may disagree with their policies, but we can disagree without being disagreeable in this country.”

He would not detail the complaints his party had made to police.

He said political leaders had a responsibility not to fearmonger during the campaign.

“Running fearmongering campaigns and negative campaigns just amps it up, and I think actually what we need to do is actually everyone needs to respect each other. We have differences of opinion about how to take the country forward, we are unique in New Zealand in that we can maintain our political civility, we don’t need to go down the pathway we’ve seen in other countries.

“It’s just about leadership, right, it’s about a leader modelling out the behaviour and treating people that they expect to treated.”

Asked if National had a hand in being responsible for fearmongering, he said it did not, and their campaign was positive and focused on what mattered most to New Zealanders.

Worry over online abuse
Shaw was worried for his candidates, having seen the online abuse they were subjected to.

“It’s vile, it is really extreme and it is stronger now than it has been in previous election campaigns and like I said I don’t think it takes much for a particularly unhinged individual from whacking their keyboard to whacking a person.”

But it was worse for female candidates and Māori, he said.

“Not just a little bit, not just an increment, but orders in magnitude, from what I’ve seen my colleagues be exposed to. It is just unhinged.”

There has been increased police participation in this campaign, Shaw said.

“Parliamentary security have got new protocols that we are observing. We have changed, for example, the way we campaign, the way we do public meetings, or when we’re out and about, we’re observing new security protocols that we haven’t had in previous years.”

Hipkins said where there might be additional risk, they have worked with Parliamentary Service on a cross-party basis to ensure there was additional support available for some MPs.

All parties have an interest in ensuring the election campaign was conducted safely, he said.

What has happened?
This week, Te Pāti Māori candidate Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke’s home was ram raided and invaded, with a threatening note left.

Police said they were investigating the burglary of a Huntly home, which was reported to them on Monday.

Te Pāti Māori issued a statement saying it was the third incident to take place at Maipi-Clarke’s home this week.

Also this week, Labour candidate for Taranaki-King Country Angela Roberts said she had laid a complaint with the police about being assaulted at an election debate in Inglewood.

Hipkins said he had great respect for Roberts, and he told her she could take any time off if she needed to, but she has chosen not to.

“She’s an incredibly staunch and energetic campaigner and I know it knocked the wind out of her sails a little bit, but I know that she’s bouncing back.”

On Thursday, Labour candidate for Northland Willow-Jean Prime told reporters she has faced the “worst comments and vitriol” in the seven campaigns she has been through – two in local government and five in central government.

“I was being shouted down every time I went to answer a question by supporters of other candidates primarily, there were not many of the general public in there,” she said of a Taxpayers Union debate in Kerikeri.

“Whenever I said a te reo Māori word, like puku, for full tummies, lunches in schools, I was shouted at.

“When I said Aotearoa, the crowd responded ‘It’s New Zealand!’. When I said rangatahi, ‘stop speaking that lanugage!’ that is racism coming from the audience, that’s not disagreeing with the gains I’m explaining that we’ve made in government.”

She said she noticed that type of “dog-whistling” in other candidate debates, but not whilst out and about with the general public.

“What is really worrying is that they feel so emboldened to be able to come out and say this stuff publicly, they don’t care that other people that might be in the audience, that might be listening or the impact that has on us as candidates.”

The New Zealand general election is on October 14, but early voting begins on October 2.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

My daughter came into the kitchen early today to tell me her friends were downtown in Auckland at Britomart, the transit hub of New Zealand’s biggest city, and that a construction worker had just run past them saying a man with a gun was shooting people.

I immediately swept all the online news media and saw nothing and was in the process of suggesting to her that maybe her friends were pranking her when it broke on Breakfast TV.

I know the area this shooting occurred in well — I was there a few days ago; most Aucklanders will know it as it is a vital entry point to downtown Auckland. To have a mass shooting event there is utterly outside the norm for Aucklanders.

As the reverberations and shock ease, there will of course be immediate political fall out.

Before all that though, first, let us acknowledge the uncompromising courage of our New Zealand police and emergency services. We all saw them sprint into that building knowing someone was armed and shooting people.

I am the first to be critical of the NZ Police, but on this day, their professionalism and unflinching bravery was one of the few things we can be grateful for on such a poisoned morning.

Let us also pause and mourn the two who were killed and 10 wounded. These were simply good honest folk going about their day of work and not one of them deserved the horror visited upon them by 24-year-old Matu Tangi Matua Reid.

Now let’s talk about Matu.

Troubling pump-action shotgun access
The media have already highlighted that he was on home detention for domestic violence charges and was wearing an ankle bracelet. This is of no surprise nor shock, many on home detention have the option of applying for leave to work — we do this because those on home detention still need to pay the rent, far more troubling was his access to a pump-action shotgun he didn’t have a gun licence for.

We know he had already been in a Turn Your Life Around Youth Development Trust programme.

Political partisans will try and seize any part of his story to whip into political frenzy for their election narrative and we should reject and resist that.

The banality of evil always tends to be far more basic than we ever appreciate.

There is nothing special about Matu; he is simply another male without the basic emotional tools to facilitate his anger beyond violence. In that regard Matu is depressingly like tens of thousands of men in NZ.

His background didn’t justify this terrible act of violence today and his actions can’t be conflated to show Labour are soft on crime.

Another depressing violent male
Matu is just another depressing male whose violence he could not control. There are tens of thousands like him and until we start focusing on building young men who have the emotional tools to facilitate their anger beyond violence, he won’t be the last.

He has shamed himself.

He has shamed his family.

He has shamed us all.

Today isn’t a day for politics, it is far too sad for that, the politics will come and everyone will be screaming their sweaty truth, but at its heart this is about broken men incapable of keeping their violence to themselves.

What a sorrowful day for my beautiful city.

Republished from The Daily Blog with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Unprecedented levels of disinformation will only get worse this election in Aotearoa New Zealand, but systems set up to deal with it during the pandemic have all been shut down, Disinformation Project researcher Dr Sanjana Hattotuwa has warned.

He says the levels of vitriol and conspiratorial discourse this past week or two are worse than anything he has seen during the past two years of the pandemic — including during the Parliament protest — but he is not aware of any public work to counteract it.

“There is no policy, there’s no framework, there’s no real regulatory mechanism, there’s no best practice, and there’s no legal oversight,” Dr Hattotuwa told RNZ News.

He says urgent action should be taken, and could include legislation, community-based initiatives, or a stronger focus on the recommendations of the 15 March 2019 mosque attacks inquiry.

Highest levels of disinformation, conspiratorialism seen yet
Dr Hattotuwa said details of the project’s analysis of violence and content from the past week — centred on the visit by British activist Posie Parker — were so confronting he could not share it.

“I don’t want to alarm listeners, but I think that the Disinformation Project — with evidence and in a sober reflection and analysis of what we are looking at — the honest assessment is not something that I can quite share, because the BSA (Broadcasting Standards Authority) guidelines won’t allow it.

“The fear is very much … particularly speaking as a Sri Lankan who has come from and studied for doctoral research offline consequences of online harm, that I’m seeing now in Aotearoa New Zealand what I studied and I thought I had left behind back in Sri Lanka.”

The new levels of vitriol were unlike anything seen since the project’s daily study began in 2021, and included a rise in targeting of politicians specifically by far-right and neo-Nazi groups, he said.

But — as the SIS noted in its latest report this week — the lines were becoming increasingly blurred between those more ideologically motivated groups, and the newer ones using disinformation and targeting authorities and government.

“You know, distinction without a difference,” he said. “The Disinformation Project is not in the business of looking at the far right and neo-Nazis — that’s a specialised domain that we don’t consider ourselves to be experts in — what we do is to look at disinformation.

“Now to find that you have neo-Nazis, the far-right, anti-semitic signatures — content, presentations and engagement — that colours that discourse is profoundly worrying because you would want to have a really clear distinction.

No Telegram ‘guardrail’
“There is no guardrail on Telegram against any of this, it’s one click away. And so there’s a whole range of worries and concerns we have … because we can’t easily delineate anymore between what would have earlier been very easy categorisation.”

Green Party co-leader Marama Davidson said she had been subjected to increasing levels of abuse in recent weeks with a particular far-right flavour.

“The online stuff is particularly worrying but no matter who it’s directed towards we’ve got to remember that can also branch out into actual violence if we don’t keep a handle on it,” she said.

“Strong community connection in real life is what holds off the far-right extremism that we’ve seen around the world … we also want the election to be run where every politician takes responsibility for a humane election dialogue that focuses on the issues, that doesn’t drum up extra hate towards any other politician or any other candidate.”

Limited protection as election nears
Dr Hattotuwa said it was particularly worrying considering the lack of tools in New Zealand to deal with disinformation and conspiratorialism.

“Every institutional mechanism and framework that was established during the pandemic to deal with disinformation has now been dissolved. There is nothing that I know in the public domain of what the government is doing with regards to disinformation,” Dr Hattotuwa said.

“The government is on the backfoot in an election year — I can understand in terms of realpolitik, but there is no investment.”

He believed the problem would only get worse as the election neared.

“The anger, the antagonism is driven by a distrust in government that is going to be instrumentalised to ever greater degrees in the future, around public consultative processing, referenda and electoral moments.

“The worry and the fear is, as has been noted by the Green Party, that the election campaigning is not going to be like anything that the country has ever experienced … that there will be offline consequences because of the online instigation and incitement.

“It’s really going to give pause to, I hope, the way that parties consider their campaign. Because the worry is — in a high trust society in New Zealand — you kind of have the expectation that you can go out and meet the constituency … I know that many others are thinking that this is now not something that you can take for granted.”

Possible countermeasures
Dr Hattotuwa said countermeasures could include legislation, security-sector reform, community-based action, or a stronger focus on implementing the recommendations of the Royal Commission of Inquiry (RCOI) into the terrorist attack on Christchurch mosques.

“There are a lot of recommendations in the RCOI that, you know, are being just cosmetically dealt with. And there are a lot of things that are not even on the government’s radar. So there’s a whole spectrum of issues there that I think really call for meaningful conversations and investment where it’s needed.”

National’s campaign chair Chris Bishop said the party did not have any specific campaign preparations under way in relation to disinformation, but would be willing to work with the government on measures to counteract it.

“If the goverment thinks we should be taking them then we’d be happy to sit down and have a conversation about it,” he said.

“Obviously we condemn violent rhetoric and very sadly MPs and candidates in the past few years have been subject to more of that including threats made to their physical wellbeing and we condemn that and we want to try to avoid that as much as possible.”

Labour’s campaign chair Megan Woods did not respond to requests for comment.

Ardern’s rhetoric not translating to policy
Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke during her valedictory farewell speech in Parliament on Wednesday about the loss of the ability to “engage in good robust debates and land on our respective positions relatively respectfully”.

“While there were a myriad of reasons, one was because so much of the information swirling around was false. I could physically see how entrenched it was for some people.”

Ardern is set to take up an unpaid role at the Christchurch Call, which was set up after the terror attacks and has a focus on targeting online proliferation of dis- and mis-information and the spread of hateful rhetoric.

Dr Hattotuwa said Ardern had led the world in her own rhetoric around the problem, but real action now needed to be taken.

“Let me be very clear, PM Ardern was a global leader in articulating the harm that disinformation has on democracy — at NATO, at Harvard, and then at the UN last year. There has been no translation into policy around that which she articulated publicly, so I think that needs to occur.

“I mean, when people say that they’re going to go and vent their frustration it might mean with a placard, it might mean with a gun.”

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

Unprecedented levels of disinformation will only get worse this election, but systems set up to deal with it during the pandemic have all been shut down, Disinformation Project researcher Sanjana Hattotuwa has warned.https://t.co/LUVAbALjGD

— RNZ (@radionz) April 8, 2023

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been appointed as Special Envoy for the Christchurch Call.

Ardern established the initiative to eliminate violent extremist content online in the wake of the March 15 mosque attacks.

Her successor as Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, appointed Ardern to the newly created position.

He had previously hinted she could continue her work on the initiative.

Hipkins said Ardern would be New Zealand’s senior representative on Christchurch Call-related matters and would work closely with France.

“This allows me to remain focused on the cyclone recovery and addressing the cost of living pressures affecting New Zealanders,” Hipkins said.

Ardern will report directly to Hipkins and has declined to be paid for the job.

“Jacinda Ardern’s commitment to stopping violent extremist content like we saw that day is key to why she should carry on this work,” Hipkins said.

“Her relationships with leaders and technology companies and her drive for change will help increase the pace and ambition of the work we are doing through the Christchurch Call.”

Ardern’s role will be reviewed at the end of the year.

She is due to deliver her final speech at Parliament tomorrow and will formally leave politics next week.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The Indonesian military says a tribunal has sentenced an army major to life in prison for his involvement in the brutal murder of four Papuan civilians in the Mimika district.

Their mutilated bodies were found in August 2022.

Benar News reports that human rights activists and victims’ relatives welcomed the conviction of Major Helmanto Fransiskus Dakhi as progress in holding members of security forces accountable for abuses in West Papua.

“The defendant … was found guilty of premeditated murder,” Herman Taryaman, a spokesman for the Indonesian military command in Papua, told journalists.

The tribunal also dismissed Dakhi from the military.

Taryaman said four other soldiers charged in connection with the killings were being tried by a tribunal in the provincial capital of Jayapura.

A sixth military suspect died in December after falling ill, while police say four civilians were also facing trial in a civilian court.

Headless bodies
Asia Pacific Report reported on 31 August 2021 that residents of Iwaka village in Mimika district had been shocked by the discovery of four sacks, each containing a headless and legless torso, in the village river.

Two other sacks were found separately, one containing four heads and the other eight legs. The sacks were weighted with stones.

A spokesman for the victims’ families, Aptoro Lokbere, said he was “satisfied” with the conviction and sentence.

Gustaf Kawer, an attorney for the victims’ families, said the life sentence for the major was a “brave” decision that should be emulated by military and civilian courts in similar cases.

Activists had said the violence degraded the dignity of indigenous Papuans amid allegations of ongoing rights abuses by government security forces in West Papua.

Dakhi is the third Indonesian Armed Forces member to be sentenced to life by a military court in a murder case since June.

Anger as MSG recruits Indonesians
Meanwhile, the Melanesian Spearhead Group’s secretariat in Vanuatu has confirmed it has recruited two Indonesians.

The statement from the group came during a protest against the move in front of the secretariat by the Vanuatu Free West Papua Association.

The group’s director-general, Leonard Louma, said the agency was aiming to strengthen its capacity and this would include the recruitment of two Indonesian nationals, filling the roles of the private sector development officer and the manager of arts, culture and youth programme.

Louma said the secretariat had been directed to “re-prioritise” its activities and was now positioning itself to meet the demands and expectations of the leaders.

The Free West Papua Association said hiring the Indonesians made a mockery of the support Vanuatu had given West Papua for many years.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

“On the ground, there is a sense of disquiet and distrust of the organisers’ motivations for the hui, as some Muslim participants directly connected to the Christchurch tragedy were not invited.”

— Khairiah A. Rahman

The two-day Aotearoa New Zealand government He Whenua Taurikura Hui on Countering Terrorism and Violent Extremism this week saw participation of state agencies, NGOs, civil rights groups and minority representations from across the country.

Yet media reportage of deeply concerning issues that have marginalised and targeted minorities was severely limited on the grounds of media’s potential “inability to protect sensitive information”.

Lest we forget, the purpose of the Hui is a direct outcome of the Royal Commission recommendations following the 2019 Christchurch mosque attacks.

The first hui last year had a media panel where Islamophobia in New Zealand and global media was addressed, and local legacy media reiterated their pact to report from a responsible perspective.

A year later, it would be good to hear what local media have done to ask the hard questions — where are we now in terms of healing for the Muslim communities? What is the situation with crime against Muslims across the country? What projects are ongoing to build social cohesion for a peaceful Aotearoa?

This year, the organisers decided to have the Hui address “all-of-society approaches” to countering violent extremism. This means removing the focus on issues faced by Muslims and extending this to concerns of other minorities subjected to abuse and hate-motivated attacks.

While Muslim participants embraced sharing the space with disenfranchised communities, many reflected that this should not detract from a follow-up to issues discussed at the last hui.

A media panel should address the role of media in representing the voiceless communities. In addition to media following up on Islamophobia, how has media represented minority groups based on their ethnicity, faith or sexual orientation? How can media play a direct role in truth-telling that would inspire social cohesion?

A participant of the LGBTQ+ community shared how bisexual members were threatened on social media as a result of local and international media’s reportage of the Amber Heard misogyny case in the US and the negative representation of bisexual people.

As a social conduit for communal voices and public opinion, the media have a significant role in countering terrorism and violent extremism and should not be excluded from the difficult conversations. Legacy, ethnic and diversity media must be included in all future hui, regardless of topics.

Confidential information can be struck from the record if necessary, but often this is hardly shared in a public forum.

There is little point having a Hui where critical national issues of safety and security are discussed across affected communities, if they are just noise in an echo chamber for those affected while people that care outside of this room are unaware.

Six takeaways from the Hui
Discussions centred on what community groups have been doing on the ground and what the larger society and government must do to counter radicalisation and terrorism.

1. Victims’ families call for a Unity Week

Hamimah Ahmat, widow of Zekeriya Tuyan who was killed in the terror attack, and who is chair of the Sakinah Trust, called on the government to observe an official Unity Week for the country to remember the 51 lives lost in Christchurch.

“More than funds — we need to make sure that the nation ring fences their time for reflection and their commitment to that [social cohesion].”

Sakinah Trust, formed by women relatives of the victims, organised Unity Week where Cantabrians participated in social activities and shared social media messages on “unity” to commemorate the lives lost and build a sense of togetherness across diverse communities.

This bonding exercise connected more than 310,000 New Zealanders and initiated 25,000 social media engagements. Hamimah emphasised the importance of this as during the pandemic Chinese migrants had suffered racism and hate rhetoric.

“We need a National Unity Week not just because of March 15 but because it is an essential element for our existence and the survival of our next generation — a generation who feels they belong and are empowered to advocate for each other,” she said.

“And this is how you honour all those beautiful souls and beautiful lives that we have lost through racism, extremism and everything that is evil.”

2. Issues and disappointment

Members of the IWCNZ (Islamic Council of Women in New Zealand) and other ethnic minority groups have repeatedly shared their disappointment that some speakers appeared to equate the terrorist mass murder in the two Christchurch mosques to the LynnMall attack in Auckland. Yet, the difference is stark.

One terrorist was killed and the other was apprehended unharmed. One had a history of trauma and mental instability, and police knew of this but failed to intervene.

The other was a white supremacist radical who had easy access to a semi-automatic weapon. While both could have been prevented, the LynnMall violent extremism was within the authority’s immediate control.

Aliya Danzeisen, a founding member of Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand (IWCNZ), said it was offensive that there was an inappropriate focus on the Muslim community in discourse on the LynnMall attack as there was failed deradicalization by the government corrections department.

“We find it offensive as a community because it was a failed government action, not getting in front, again, that someone was shot and killed and seven people were stabbed.”

Danzeisen also reported that despite sitting in the corrections forum for community, she was unaware of any change since the Royal Commission in terms of addressing radicalisation.

On the ground, there is a sense of disquiet and distrust of the organisers’ motivations for the hui, as some Muslim participants directly connected to the Christchurch tragedy were not invited.

Murray Stirling, treasurer of An Noor Mosque, and Anthony Green, a spokesperson for the Christchurch victims, were present at last year’s Hui but did not receive invitations this year.

3. Academic input from Te Tiriti perspectives

The opening of the conference was led by research from a Te Tiriti perspective. The Muslim community had called for a Te Tiriti involvement in the Hui to acknowledge the first marginalised people of the land.

One shared feature of all the discussions related to colonialism. Tina Ngata, environmental, indigenous and human rights activist, called out those in power who passively protect and maintain colonial privilege, allowing extreme and racist ideas to persist.

Ngata cited racialised myth-making in media and schools, state-sanctioned police violence, hyper-surveillance and the incarceration of non-white people.

She argued that a critical mass of harmful ideas was growing and that it is the “responsibility of accountable power to engage humbly in discussion; not just about participants as victims or solution-bearers but also about structural power as part of the problem”.

Bill Hamilton from the Iwi Chairs forum paid tribute to the work of the late Moana Jackson in the area of Te Tiriti, reminding people that Te Tiriti belonged to everyone.

Hamilton recounted that despite Te Tiriti’s promise of protection and non-discrimination, Māori suffered terrorist acts.

“We had invasions at Parihaka . . . our leaders were demonised . . . our grandparents were beaten as small kids by the state for speaking their language [Māori].”

Hamilton reflected on the values of rangatiratanga and said that perhaps, instead of forming a relationship with “the crown”, Māori was better off forming relationships with minority communities based on shared values.

He explained that rangatiratanga is a right to self-determination; the right to maintain and strengthen institutions and representations. It is a right enjoyed by everyone.

Hamilton called for a state apology and acknowledgement of the terrorism inflicted on whānau in Aotearoa. He proposed a revitalisation of rangatiratanga, the removal of inequalities and discrimination, and the strengthening of relationships.

Rawiri Taonui, an independent researcher, presented a Te Tiriti framework for national security.

There was a marked difference between the Crown’s sovereign view of the Te Tiriti relationship with Māori and Māori’s view of an equal and reciprocal Te Tiriti relationship with the Crown.

Taonui highlighted that while Te Tiriti was identified as important for social cohesion in the Royal Commission Report, Te Tiriti was absent in the 15 recommendations for social cohesion.

He explained the tendency in policy documents to separate Māori from new cultural communities.

“That is a very unhelpful disconnect because if we are trying to improve social cohesion, one of the things we need to do is bring Māori and many of our new cultural communities together. Because we share similar histories — colonisation, racism, violence.”

Taonui proposed a “whole of New Zealand approach” towards countering terrorism, emphasising social cohesion to prevent extremism as “we all belong here”.

4. On countering radicalism

In a panel session on “Responding to the changing threat environment in Aotearoa”, Paul Spoonley, co-director of He Whenua Taurikura National Centre of Research Excellence, said that he was confused about how communities should be engaged as “often the affected communities are not the ones that provided the activists or the extremists. How do we reach out to those communities who might often be Pākehā?

“By the time we get to know about these groups, they have progressed down quite a long path towards radicalisation.

“So if we are going to provide tools to communities, we must understand that the context in which people get recruited are often very intimate; we are talking about whānau and peer groups. We are talking about micro settings.”

Sara Salman, from Victoria University in Wellington, spoke on radicalism and the thought processes and emotional attraction to notoriety and camaraderie that encourage destructive behaviours.

For radicals, there is a feeling of deprivation, “a resentment and hostility towards changes in the social world”, whether these are women in the workspace, migrants in society, or co-governance in the political system.

In the context of March 15, the radical is typically a white supremacist male. Such males join extremist groups because they feel a sense of loss and are motivated by power and social status.

According to Salman, there is now a real threat to our governance and democracy by radical groups through subtle ways like entering into politics.

“Radical individuals who ascribe to supremacy ideas are engaging in disruptions that are considered legitimate by entering into local politics to disrupt governance.”

Salman warned that although the government might prefer disengagement, which is intervention before a person commits violence, deradicalisation is critical as it aims to change destructive thinking.

Research showed that children as young as 11 have been recruited and influenced by radical ideas. Without being repressive, the government needs to deradicalise vulnerable groups.

5. Vulnerable communities and post-colonial Te Tiriti human rights

Several speakers on the “countering messages of hate” panel discussed horrific stories of physical, verbal and sexual attacks based on their identities including, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation.

Many spoke about the lack of fair representations in media and professional roles and one participant emphasised that members of a group are diverse and not defined by stereotypes.

In an earlier session, chair of the Rainbow New Zealand Charitable Trust, called on society, including the ethnic and religious communities, to find ways of helping this group feel supported and loved in their communities.

Lexie Matheson, representing the trans community, spoke on the importance of being included in discussions about her people. She echoed my point at last year’s media panel about fair representations: “Nothing about us, without us”.

In the closing session, Paul Hunt, chair of the Human Rights Commission argued that the wide spectrum of human rights is normative as it defined the ethical and legal codes for conduct of states and constituted humanity’s response to countering terrorism.

Hunt offered a post-colonial human rights perspective and called for a process of truth-telling and peaceful reconciliation which respects the universal declaration of human rights and Te Tiriti.

“My point is in today’s Aotearoa, violent extremism includes racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia and white supremacy. And it is dangerous for all communities and for all of us.

“And if we are to address with integrity today’s violence, racism and white supremacy, we have to acknowledge yesterday’s violence, racism and white supremacy which was part of the social fabric of the imperial project in Aotearoa.”

6. What the Hui got right and wrong

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s presence and participation on the final day was timely, inspired confidence and implied a seriousness to address issues. Ardern covered developments that impact on national security, from technology, covid-19 and the war in Ukraine to climate change.

She addressed the radicalisation prevention framework and announced its release at year end, with an approved budget funding for $3.8 million to counter terrorism and violent extremism.

The Hui must have cost a pretty penny. Participants appreciated the food and comfort of the venue, but was there really a need for illustrators to capture the meetings on noticeboards?

If the organisers meant to enthuse participants with the novelties of artwork, stylish pens, and a supportive environment of aroha and healing, they have done a decent job.

But repeated feedback from Muslim representatives on the lack of action by government departments must be taken seriously and addressed promptly. All the good intentions without action achieve nothing.

Until those directly involved in the horrendous Christchurch massacres witness concrete sustainable actions that can support social cohesion, counter radicalism and violent extremism, the great expenses and show of love at this Hui would be wasted.

Khairiah A Rahman was a speaker at the media panel at the He Whenua Taurikura Hui in 2021. She is a senior lecturer at AUT’s School of Communication Studies, a member of FIANZ Think Tank, secretary of media education for Asian Congress of Media and Communication (ACMC), secretary of the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), assistant editor of Pacific Journalism Review and a member of AUT’s Diversity Caucus.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

At least 32 people have been killed in an all-out war between Kulumata and Kuboma tribes in Milne Bay’s Kiriwina island.

Internal Security Minister Peter Tsiamalili Jr confirmed that the killings had erupted early last month after yam gardens were destroyed.

“A police team from Port Moresby was deployed yesterday morning to the island to contain and manage the raging war,” he said.

“The Commissioner of Police David Manning is in charge of the operations and directives.

“He has advised me that he is taking swift and appropriate action.

“Police will help forge peace,” he added.

According to sources on the ground, the fight started in early September when a man from Kuboma tribe was killed in a fight over a soccer game in the remote Trobriand archipelago.

Situation still tense
The situation has remained tense since then and escalated on Monday, when the Kuboma villagers (seven villages inland that include Bwetalu, Yalaka, Buduwalaka, Kuluwa, Luya, Wabutuma and Gumilababa villages) allegedly destroyed all the yam gardens of the Kulumata villages (Kavataria, Mulosaida and Orabesi villages).

The Kulumata villagers went up to the station to demand answers from the district development authority on why their yam gardens were destroyed and for authorities to address the situation when they were attacked by the Kuboma villagers who were already there waiting for them.

All-out tribal warfare with traditional spears and bush knives broke out between the two parties, that led to 26 people being killed from the Kuboma side and about six people killed from the Kulumata side.

Another source said it was “frightening to see such violence on their island” that is locally known or dubbed as the “island of love”.

“Tribal fighting has always been part of our lives and culture.

“But normally when someone got killed, the fighting stopped, they cease fire and start the traditional process of dealing with the death, and they do not just continue fighting like this.

“The Kulumata and the Kuboma people are all related to each other and it is heartbreaking for us as mothers, sisters, daughters to watch our people fight among themselves like this.”

“But you must also understand that our gardens are very important to us.

Painted in war colours
“Our yams are important and very valuable, to see them chopped off, destroyed — yes our men would be so angry, because we value our gardens.”

They [men] painted themselves in the traditional war colors and went up to the station to show their frustration.

When they met the other party, they started fighting, and we ran away with our children.

“They will not harm women and children but it was just too frightening to watch, so we ran away,” the source said.

Attempts to get comments from the local MP and Deputy Opposition Leader Douglas Tomuriesa was unsuccessful yesterday.

RNZ Pacific’s PNG correspondent Scott Waide said the clash during the football match five weeks ago left two people dead.

He told RNZ Pacific Waves that in this week’s retaliatory attack a 13-year-old boy was among the dead and several women were wounded.

Kiriwina Island Area Manager Nelson Tauyuwada said in the lead-up to the massacre, crops were damaged, threatening livelihoods.

Rebecca Kuku is a reporter with The National in PNG. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

In Papua New Guinea, some already disenfranchised women have to face an added burden of sorcery accusation-related violence (SARV). However, a global initiative by the United Nations with support from the European Union has recently conducted a consultation on a proposed Human Rights Defenders Protection bill aimed at supporting groups and community leaders in ending this violence.

SARV cases remain high in the highland provinces of PNG despite a national action plan intended to eradicate the crime. Most victims of SARV are women elders in poor communities who are blamed for practising sorcery as the cause of the mysterious illness or death of a family member.

SARV cases rose during the pandemic, which reflects the lack of information about the coronavirus.

SARV was tackled by PNG legislators during a Special Parliamentary Committee in August 2021. The committee report was explicit in condemning SARV:

“This type of violence is absolutely unacceptable: it is not excusable as part of PNG’s culture but rather, arises from the misunderstanding (and sometimes the deliberate manipulation) of traditions and religion to harm innocent people, in particular women and children.

“SARV against women is often particularly brutal and sexualised, with the violent acts specifically targeting the victim’s womanhood.”

‘388 people’ accused of sorcery each year
The committee also tried to ascertain the number of SARV cases while noting that the incidents could be higher since many victims are reluctant to file a legal action against family members:

“An average of 388 people are accused of sorcery each year in the 4 provinces combined. A third of these led to physical violence or property damage. Amongst those accused, 65 were killed, 86 suffered permanent injury and 141 survived other serious assault and harm, such as burning, cutting, tying or being forced into water. Overall, 93 cases involved torture: 20 lasted several days and 10 lasted a week or even longer. The submission used that data to estimate the number of violent SARV incidents between the year 2000 and June 2020 to be over 6,000, resulting in an estimated 3,000 deaths nationally.”

PNG doctors call for compulsory post-mortems to stem sorcery killings – Asia Pacific Report https://t.co/C1YgZakANu pic.twitter.com/lYSfrkPp0M

— Trupla PNG (@truplapng) January 30, 2018

Writing for the DevPolicy blog, Anton Lutz and Miranda Forsyth highlighted the long-term impact of SARV on survivors, especially women and children:

“In our 4-year study, we found that only 15% of victims die, leaving more than enough scarred, traumatised, unsupported, fearful people to seek redress in court. But they don’t. They move away. They go into hiding. They bounce around from safe house to safe house. They wait. They hope they don’t get attacked again.”

SARV cases were still being recorded even after a nationwide campaign was launched against the crime. In an editorial published in January, the Post-Courier pressed for urgent action:

“Is murder and terrorism crippling society that we blame sorcery as the easy way out and ignore it?

“This matter has been raised before.

“But no one is changing because lives are being lost or ruined and no one seems to care.

“Women especially are being targeted so there must be people who have deep hatred for women.

“They could be sick in the head.

“It would also appear that tribal enmity is creeping into the so-called sorcery killings and it is a payback in disguise.

“Payback killings are well known in PNG so why are we naive about it?”

Call for better government response
Father Giorgio Licini of the Catholic Bishops Conference echoed the call for better government response to this complex social problem: “The traditional reaction to sorcery in old Europe and current PNG appears to be largely irrational, based on suspicion and fear, retaliation and pay-back, opportunism, lies and business. The legislation is poor, insufficient, practically inexistent for an issue that is complex. It involves murder but is more than common criminal behaviour.”

Dominic Kanea, a SARV survivor, asked for tougher penalties against those who commit SARV:

“We need the MPs from the upper Highlands region to work in unity to fight against sorcery accusation-related violence.

“Introduce tougher penalties for the cowards who prey on innocent people and go on the spree of destroying properties worth millions of kina [PNG currency] and killing of innocent people.”

Women’s rights advocate Dame Carol Kidu insists that SARV is a recent phenomenon and cautions against associating it with any PNG traditions or history:

“In no anthropological writings have I seen reference to anything barbaric as this. This is not part of the ancestry of PNG as we are far more a caring society. I do not know why it has emerged like this, because we know that sorcery is part of PNG’s society, but SARV is not part of the society. SARV killings are premeditated murder and encouraged by friends and relatives.”

Fiona Hukula of the PNG National Research Institute warns about how the ongoing pandemic is fueling fear and even increasing instances of SARV:

“…there is a risk that the health crisis posed by COVID-19 has the potential to precipitate economic and social crisis. This in turn may well involve violence, as people look to allocate blame and find protection in uncertain times by scapegoating others.

The government and society at large needs to act fast to prevent the spread of fear that is a catalyst for violence and social unrest.”

• Watch this video on how the proposed Human Rights Defenders Protection bill can boost the work of women community leaders in fighting SARV in PNG:

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

The area around New Zealand’s Parliament has today been the scene of a full-day ordeal of violence as police removed protesters whose behaviour prompted the Prime Minister to say there were “words I cannot use in this environment for what I saw”.

Early this morning, police launched an operation at Parliament and the surrounding areas in the capital Wellington “to restore order and access to the area”.

Before the sun rose, police could be seen getting information, holding shields.

As the sun set at the end of the day, about 150 protesters were peacefully facing police with riot shields on Featherston Street near the Railway Station — although other officers were clearing away signs of the earlier violence – bricks and bottles that had been thrown at them.

The afternoon saw fires lit, explosions, weapons used against police, injuries to officers and arrests at the 23-day anti-covid public health measures protest.

About 5pm, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern addressed media and laid out just how she felt about the actions of the protesters.

Ardern said she was angry and deeply saddened to see Parliament desecrated in the way seen today, including the children’s playground being set alight.

An ‘illegal, hostile’ occupation
It demonstrated why the government refused to engage with the group, she said.

“It was an illegal occupation, they engaged in hostile, violent and aggressive behaviour throughout the occupation, and today that has culminated in the desecration of this Parliament’s grounds.

“I am absolutely committed we will restore those grounds and we will not be defined by one act by a small group of people.”

Ardern said there was a place for peaceful protest in this country, but “this is not the way that we engage and protest”. She said peaceful protest was the way to send a message, this by comparison was “a way to end up before the courts”.

Police remove protesters from Parliament.      Video: RNZ News

How it played out
As the day began, some protesters had spent the night preparing for action, with cars and campervans moved to block streets.

As police moved into the area, a loud speaker blared instructions for protesters to leave or be arrested, while officers searched tents and checked no-one was in them before ripping them down.

As daylight set in, a clash between protesters and police followed.

But police gained significant ground, removing a number of vehicles and structures belonging to the protesters.

Leading up to midday, police in riot gear could be seen in among the operation. Pepper spray was used in response to protesters using fire extinguishers at officers.

About noon, Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said a point had been reached “where protest leaders were either unable or unwilling to effect substantial change”.

“We have been concerned that those with good intentions have been outnumbered by those willing to use violence,” he said.

“The harm being done far outweighs any legitimate protest.”

Parliament grounds ‘reclaimed’: Police operation ends 23-day protest https://t.co/38TuLHV9i8

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) March 2, 2022

Balance had tipped
Until today, police had been trying to de-escalate the situation, he said. But the balance had tipped.

“We will continue this operation until this is completed.”

Commissioner Coster would not give a timeline, saying it would be when the job was done.

As the afternoon progressed, the situation heated up.

Police continued to gain ground, ripping out tents, barriers and signs, protesters physically pushed back, threw bricks, wood and other items, and used tent poles like javelins.

Gas bottles exploded and fires were lit – including Parliament’s slide and tents set ablaze.

Just before 4pm, police said they had arrested 38 people and towed 30 vehicles.

Shortly after, police gained more ground including the Beehive forecourt and then began using fire hoses to spray protesters.

Not long after, Assistant Police Commissioner Richard Chambers told Checkpoint that Parliament Grounds had been reclaimed after 23 days of occupation.

“We’ve made magnificent progress today our staff have done an incredible job, in very challenging circumstances.

“You will have seen that has been met with significant resistance and violence from some, and we are very pleased with the way that our staff dealt with it today.”

Seven police staff required hospital treatment.

“They have a range of minor and serious but non-life threatening injuries. They are all receiving support and their families have been advised,” police said in a statement.

“Some injuries were lacerations caused by objects thrown at them. These included bricks and paving stones taken from the nearby streets, rocks, traffic cones, poles and wood from pallets. Staff were also showered with paint, petrol and water from a high-powered fire hose.”

Review of protest occupation
Ardern signalled there would be a review of the protest occupation at Parliament to determine if more could have been done to prevent it from happening.

Coming into the evening, police said they would continue efforts to clear Parliament grounds overnight.

There will be a substantial police presence in Wellington and at Parliament, and residents should be assured that police will continue to make their presence felt and keep them safe.

A small number of protesters remained near the Victoria University Pipitea campus.

Late on Wednesday evening, Speaker of Parliament Trevor Mallard said in a statement that Parliament’s grounds would be closed until further notice.

‘Recovery plan’
“A recovery plan for the grounds has been developed which includes working with mana whenua and coordinating offers of assistance from volunteer groups,” he said.

“Due to assessments of the grounds’ condition that must take place before that work can begin, and for health, safety, and sanitary reasons, I ask that all members of the public please stay away till advised otherwise.

“I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the police, Parliamentary Security, Buildings and Facilities, Health and Safety teams and all other staff for their continued efforts to keep everyone at Parliament and the surrounding areas safe.

“Their resilience and understanding, along with all of you who have been affected by this protest must be acknowledged and thanks given for everyone’s hard work and messages of support.”

More information about the recovery plan for Parliament’s grounds would be released when it was available, Mallard said.

“We will restore our beautiful grounds and I will keep you informed of developments.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says she is saddened and angered by protesters’ actions today, and that the New Zealand Parliament’s grounds have been “desecrated”.

Ardern addressed media after an afternoon that saw fires lit, explosions and objects thrown at police as an anti-covid public health protest sparked violent scenes.

There have been multiple arrests, vehicles have been towed away and some police and protesters have suffered injuries.

Some set fire to protesters’ tents arousing concern that gas canisters would explode, and some large blasts were heard.

Police were able to take back most of the ground the protesters had been occupying for the past three weeks.

Ardern said she was angry and deeply saddened to see Parliament desecrated in the way seen today, including the children’s playground being set alight.

She said it demonstrated why the government refused to engage with the group.

‘An illegal occupation’
“It was an illegal occupation, they engaged in hostile, violent and aggressive behaviour throughout the occupation, and today that has culminated in the desecration of this Parliament’s grounds,” she said.

“I am absolutely committed we will restore those grounds and we will not be defined by one act by a small group of people.”

Asked about those who had been throwing projectiles at police, including LPG bottles thrown on flames and cobblestones hurled at officers, she said there were “words I cannot use in this environment for what I saw today”.

She said while the events today did not surprise her — considering the anger protesters had already expressed in the past few days — Ardern said it did sadden her.

PM Jacinda Ardern’s media briefing outside Parliament

Video: RNZ News

She said anyone still throwing projectiles should “put down their weapons long enough for police to arrest them”.

Ardern said there was a place for peaceful protest in this country, but “this is not the way that we engage and protest”.

She said peaceful protest was the way to send a message, this by comparison is “a way to end up before the courts”.

Asked if protesters would be able to return overnight or tomorrow, Ardern said police would be present at Parliament.

She said the police commissioner wished to make the point that there would be a substantial police presence in Wellington, and locals should be assured that while this had been a distressing period, police would continue to make their presence felt and keep them safe.

Ardern said she knew that in planning for today’s operation, police had expected there would be “hostility, resistance and violence”.

“They planned for that because that is what they and Wellingtonians have experienced for several weeks now.”

She said while they planned for it, it was another thing entirely to witness it.

Thanks to frontline police, emergency services
“To our frontline police and emergency and fire services, you have our deep admiration and our thanks. You have been calm but resolute in trying to bring this occupation to a conclusion,” she said.

“It has come at great risk to your personal safety. Thank you for putting others before yourselves.”

She said she had spoken to the police commissioner and there have been various injuries sustained by officers, but she would leave it to him to go into more detail.

Ardern said the fires created in the front of Parliament, including at the war memorial were causing more distress than what the police would have done today.

She said she believed the force that was used was used to keep others safe.

She said police have been mindful of the presence of children throughout the occupation, and there were other agencies present should there be a situation where children were left unsupervised or uncared for, such as if parents were arrested.

Infected 20,000 in one day
Ardern said it was almost impossible to comprehend that people would stand opposed to efforts to slow down the spread of a disease, when it has infected 20,000 and put more than 400 in hospital in just one day.

She said while many had seen disinformation and dismissed it as conspiracy theory, a small portion had believed it and acted on it in a violent way.

“This cannot stand.”

Ardern said this afternoon’s events were an attack on frontline police, an attack on Parliament, and an attack on New Zealanders’ values, and it was wrong.

“Our country will not be defined by the dismantling of an occupation. In fact when we look back on this period in our history, I hope we remember one thing,” she said.

“Thousands more lives were saved in the past two years by your actions as New Zealanders than were on that front lawn of Parliament today.

“The sacrifices we were all willing to make to look after one another, that is what will define us, no protest, no fire, no placards will ever change that. Today the police will restore order and tomorrow your government will work hard to get us safely back to the normality everyone deserves.”

About 270 protesters
Ardern said there was nothing to suggest that security settings as a country needed to change in response to the protest. She said it was estimated there were about 270 protesters who were causing the acts of violence and destruction seen today.

“That demonstrates it only takes a relatively small group of people who are committed to destruction to cause it, should they so choose. But it also demonstrates it was not a large group who were engaging in those acts either.

“We are not going to dismiss some of the underlying causes of what we have seen, but nor will we excuse it.”

She said work would be done to address how misinformation and disinformation led to what was seen today, but the government “will be at pains to ensure that it never becomes an excuse for the violent acts that it resulted in”.

“It’s a dangerous place when citizens are led into spaces where they believe so deeply in conspiracy theory that they react with such violence.”

Ardern acknowledged there have been for a long time a group of New Zealanders who have been living on the margins and have subscribed to other conspiracy theories, and “this happens to be the current rallying cry”.

Ardern said finding a solution to disinformation and misinformation was not about taking away people’s ability to have differing opinions or debate, to take different positions.

“People should of course always have that freedom of thought and view and perspective and in New Zealand we’ve celebrated that, but when the debate you’re having is no longer based on fact, where does that take you? That is the challenge we have.”

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Police leaders condemned the behaviour by protesters outside New Zealand’s Parliament in the capital Wellington today as “absolutely disgraceful”.

The confrontation between police and protesters began early on Tuesday morning and escalated when a car hurtled towards officers.

Three police officers were hospitalised after being hit with what they described as a “stinging substance”.

But protesters in the camp insist their stand remains peaceful, reiterating they will be going nowhere until covid-19 vaccine mandates are dropped.

Despite the claim the protest is “peaceful”, Wellington Free Ambulance announced it has made the “difficult decision” to no longer enter the protest area at Parliament.

It said the decision was made to prioritise the safety of paramedics, after the white Honda drove at police.

“The behaviour of a certain group within the protests community is absolutely disgraceful,” said Police Assistant Commissioner Richard Chambers.

Faeces thrown at police
In a repeat of Monday’s conflict, officers had faeces thrown at them. The stinging substance that was thrown at police has not been identified.

“We are working very, very hard to reduce the impact of the protest on the community here in Wellington, and to be met with the resistance we saw this morning is very disappointing for everybody,” Chambers said.

However, many still camped at Parliament on the 15th day of the protest are insisting they come in peace.

“This is a lovely community,” one woman told Checkpoint. “I’ve heard children say ‘I want to live here’.”

Flax hats at a gazebo
Leslie was weaving flax hats at a gazebo on the outskirts of the occupation. She said she felt the pull to go to Wellington after watching the protest on TV and after losing her job of seven years as a cook.

“I didn’t only lose my job, I lost my house… the house was part of my job.”

Another protester, Jacob, said the mandates meant he could not keep his job, and he was facing losing his house.

“I’ve been a caregiver working with men living with disabilities. And now since mandates, I haven’t been able to work with these clients, even though it’s one on one and they would actually want to have that continuity.”

Aucklander Bryan told Checkpoint he had been at the protest since day one and had been at the front of the line with his son in clashes with police, which he described as “amazing”.

Year 10 student Libby was also at the protest, off school and with her family.

“My brother can’t play sports. I can’t play sports. All my friends — one of my friends, she’s a really good football player and she’s been denied, she can’t play in her club teams and she’s like, really good, like she could go nationals, worldwide if she wanted to.”

The fact is that the government has not mandated that children must be vaccinated to participate in school or extracurricular activities. They are decisions made independently by schools and clubs.

Underbelly of undesirable, illegal, activity
While the atmosphere appears friendly on the ground at the protest, police say they are seeing something quite different.

Assistant Commissioner Chambers said there was an underbelly of undesirable, illegal, activity.

“There has been a suggestion that within the protest area down there, there may be sexual assaults.

“We are the only agency who can investigate sexual assaults and if anyone would like to come forward to us to talk about what might have occurred to them then please do come forward and we will work with you as best we can.”

Some protesters agree there are small, negative elements that need cleaning up, while others say the protest message must be refined.

“We need to be able to put our egos aside and be able to put our agendas aside and come together,” one protester told Checkpoint.

Mayor in high level talks
Wellington Mayor Andy Foster told Checkpoint he was in high level talks regarding the Parliament protest but would not detail who he was talking to.

Foster said he was also talking with government and police regularly.

“We are looking to achieve the same thing which is trying to get as quick as possible, as safe as possible, resolution of this protest so that we can get our streets back and people can go about doing their normal daily business.”

He said police had made “good progress” today with containing the spread of the protest, but things at the protest were not in an “acceptable position” yet.

On people losing their jobs because of the mandate, Foster said “there had to be a way through this”.

“I think the government has been fairly clear that it won’t remove mandates at this stage, but I think at least if there can be a clear pathway that might be enough for some people.

“And maybe the kind of thing you might want to think about is if … people are on sick leave, that kind of thing, just allow that to be extended so that the job is not actually lost.”

Foster said Wellington City Council was putting together a pandemic response package for local businesses, including rates deferral, reduced parking costs, and reducing council fees and charges for businesses particularly in hospitality.

Mixed messages aside, one thing that appeared consistent among the masses — with a pre-school, a vegetable garden and even a tattoo parlour — they are in it for the long haul.

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

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

There is a dangerous anger on rapid boil at the protest in Wellington. It is a stew of dispossession and unrest alongside various delusional beliefs and violent threats.

Two weeks into the protest and the police have had to endure human waste and acid thrown at them; a car driven into them; threats of violence; chants of “shame on you”; accusations of police brutality; physical attacks and injuries.

Meanwhile, the illegal occupiers (who refused to move their cars to a free car park) claim peace and love as the Ministry of Health reported today a record 2846 new community cases of covid-19 with 143 people in hospital with the virus.

This “protest” was from the beginning organised in part and spread by QAnon (a conspiracy group that want to hang the government literally) alongside religious groups. Also in the mix are white supremacists (Nationalist Front).

It was joined by “everyday people” annoyed with mandates they don’t want to live with.

Well, if these “everyday people” can lower their standards to stand shoulder to shoulder with violent extremists all I can say is, “shame on you”.

Deputy Leader of the House, Labour’s Michael Wood recently spoke of these threats at Parliament: “There is a river of violence and menace. There is a river of anti-Semitism. There is a river of Islamophobia. There is a river of threats to people who work in this place and our staff.”

A recent Stuff article reported that a “Labour MP says protesters have been waiting at the doors of her office at night, and are telling politicians they will be ‘lynched, hung or kidnapped’”.

Michael Wood: “There is a river of filth, there is a river of violence and menace, there is a river of antisemitism, there is a river of Islamophobia…there is a river of genuine fascism in parts of the event that we see out the front of this parliament today” pic.twitter.com/h5zJRXA5TL

— Mediaspot (@mediaspotnz) February 17, 2022

Deputy Speaker Michael Wood speaking in Parliament on February 17. Video: NZ Parliament

These underlying threads of violence give the protest its bite, if not its bark. The protest in Wellington was inspired by the truckers’ convoy in Canada and the occupation of Ottawa.

We know that this was not an organic uprising of truckles, but was rather inspired by QAnon conspiracy theorists.

Conspiracy far right media platform Counterspin in New Zealand was central in the formation and viral spread of the Aotearoa convoy,

It is also, astoundingly, a protest that is preaching aroha (love) and peace. This is at odds with the Trump-loving, QAnon inspired cesspit of violence. QAnon believes that the government is full of elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and media.

They believe that politicians and journalists will be executed in a day of reckoning.

That is why “hang ‘em high” was chalked on the steps to Parliament in the first days of the protest. Many people at this protest want to see politicians and media people executed.

This protest also has the support of white supremacists with swastikas chalked on a statue in the early days.

This disgusting far-right, anti-establishment hatred has no place in Aotearoa. Yet here it is at a protest supported by thousands on the Parliament lawn.

I have protested at many events over the years in Aotearoa in the name of animal rights. Never would I stand alongside people who preach violence. And in all cases police behaviour toward myself and my fellow protestors has been exemplary and respectful.

The protest was ill-thought out in direction, leaderless, and doomed to failure. Their demands cannot possibly be met in a time of global pandemic that has brought the world quite literally to its knees.

And yet as the days tick by, yoga classes spring up alongside gardens. Food stalls and dancing, a concert, love and freedom grow like fairy tales.

It’s all a fairy tale. Make no mistake. This protest may preach peace, but its bones are evil.

— Lynley Tulloch

It’s all a fairy tale. Make no mistake. This protest may preach peace, but its bones are evil.

So where to go from here? There is no end in sight for this drama. The protesters are revelling.

The government can’t move them. Police can’t move them. The army can’t move them.

Ironically, as suggested by ex-Labour party president Mike Williams, it will be the covid virus itself that will bring them down. And that is one little virus that doesn’t care about threats of violence.

The only thing it will take notice of is a vaccine and a mask, and those are in short supply on Parliament grounds right now.

The virus doesn’t care if you are a child, or elderly, or immune-compromised or dangerously deluded. It doesn’t give a care in the world about your rights. It just goes and sticks its spikes right into you joyfully.

And so, Mike Williams is probably right. And therein lies the biggest irony of this whole protest.

Dr Lynley Tulloch is an educational academic and also writes on animal rights, veganism, early childhood, feminist issues, environmentalism, and sustainable development.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

“Enough is enough,” is the impassioned plea of the women, mothers and daughters of Papua New Guinea, says Mea Isaac, women’s representative in the Motu-Koitabu Assembly.

She has called for all forms of violence, abuse and discrimination against women to stop in the wake of the latest case of “barbaric torture” sparked by sorcery allegations.

Isaac made the call after witnessing National Capital District (NCD) Governor Powes Parkop hand over K50,000 (abut NZ$22,000) to the Police Department to assist with their operations to catch tribesmen in Southern Highlands alleged to have tortured five women accused of sorcery — killing two of them.

She said there were reports of far too much violence directed at innocent women, — especially the weak and helpless, ones who could not defend themselves.

“These are the very people who gave birth to you men, these are the very people who have nurtured you for nine months within their womb and the very people who help you men to grow up in feeding you, clothing you or when you cry and you fall they are there to embrace you,” she said.

“And here you are, callous men, you turn around and do this horrific act in return. Please, enough is enough,” Isaac said.

“No more violence, enough is enough; justice must be served and I am appealing to those who have committed this horrific crime to please surrender yourselves.

‘Your mothers, your sisters, your aunties …’
“These are your mothers, your sisters, your aunties and nieces why do you have to do such a terrible thing to them.”

Isaac said sorcery related, family and sexual related violence was also happening in the NCD. She cited an example such as in her village of Hanuabada, where a husband had beaten his wife to death.

She said there were many reported cases in the city settlements where women were attacked on the whim of so-called “glassman” on allegations of sorcery.

Moresby South women’s rep Rose Hagua shared these sentiments, saying that women and girls — despite so many barriers — wanted to take this challenge and to use their voice as a medium on behalf of the victims.

So they staged a march last December to raise their concerns relating to this “barbaric torture” of women in PNG’s Highlands.

Mark Talia is a PNG Post-Courier reporter. Republished with permission.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

A defiant Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has vowed tonight that he will not resign and will defend Solomon Islands democracy with his life.

After two-days of looting with Honiara’s Chinatown in ruins and calls for him to step down, Sogavare declared he was not resigning.

“If I am removed as Prime Minister, it will be on the floor of Parliament,” he said.

“I have faith and respect in our democratic process, and I will defend it with my life. I say this with deepest conviction.

“Our people need to and must understand that our actions in defending democracy is not merely a lip service. It is conviction in the principles and values that underpins our democracy and all democracies around the world.”

Sogavare said in a radio broadcast to the nation the past 36 hours had seen the country, especially, Honiara brought to its knees.

“I have been asked to step down and while I acknowledge that call I must also respect our democracy. I am elected as the Prime Minister of our beloved country by 35 members of Parliament who represent their people.

Politicians’ ‘hunger for power’
“The call for me to step down is premised on the hunger for power by certain politicians who do not have any respect for the principles of democracy and due process,” he said.

Sogavare said that in 2006 a precedent had been set when the then Prime Minister was asked to resign after a riot in Honiara.

“That event is the precedent for our current situation. If I am to step down, what message would that send to our people, children and generations to come?” he asked.

“Some of us are of the opinion that if I step down the protests and riots will stop. This is the easiest decision to make.

“However, the effect of this decision is what weighs heavy in my heart. Are we saying to our young children and youths that whenever we are not happy with those in authority we take the laws into our own hands?

“If we do this, it is a very dangerous message to our people and future generations.

“We are effectively saying to our children, take the law into your hands if [and] whenever you are not happy. This must never be the message we send nor the conviction we instill in our citizens if we are to progress as a peaceful democracy.”

Following the 2 day escalation of riots in Honiara, the #SolomonIslands Prime Minister, Hon. Manasseh Sogavare released an audio (voice) message on state broadcaster @NewsSibc.

His message was clear, he will not step down as PM esp. at the risk of setting a dangerous precedent. pic.twitter.com/9GisPuN9dv

— Jone Tuiipelehaki (@tuiipelehaki) November 25, 2021

‘Return to your homes’
Sogavare said in his appeal: “I call on all our people to please return to your homes. Our city has already been ransacked with properties burnt to the ground. It will take a lot of effort and money to rebuild it.

“I appeal to you all to respect our city, public and private properties and the safety of innocent civilians.

“Destruction, looting and violence is not how we address our grievances but instead through dialogue and consultation which the government has been advancing despite misinformation being circulated by certain individuals and leaders who have no regard for the collateral and irreversible damage caused by such unwarranted actions,” he said.

Sogavare asked the the churches to pray for the country and people.

Sogavare also urged all ministers and members of Parliament to “defend our democracy”.

He said the government had not been idle with its efforts to protect the country from covid-19, sustain the economy and progress crucial reforms in the best interests of the nation as a whole.

Regional support
“I have been in contact with the government of Australia and Papua New Guinea seeking their assistance to assist our country which is forthcoming. We cannot allow our country, people and our future to be held at ransom by very few people representing their own narrow interests,” he said.

“I am extremely saddened that people have been misled by politicians for their own agenda. Our unsuspecting people have continuously been misled and are victims in this sad and unfortunate situation.

“I do not blame the people who are protesting and rioting, they are citizens of our country, and unfortunately they have been used by certain politicians and individuals to further their own selfish and narrow agendas.”

Robert Iroga is editor of Solomon Business Magazine. This article is republished with permission.

The burning of Chinatown is moving westward one building at a time. View from my quarantine hotel. #Chinatown #Riot #Honiara #SolomonIslands ?? pic.twitter.com/ejyglnSjxE

— mytagimoucia (@mytagimoucia) November 25, 2021

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz