NewzIntel.com

Category: Fiji

  • MIL-Evening Report: Fiji ‘failing’ the Gaza genocide and humanity test, says rights group

    Asia Pacific Report

    The NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji has sharply criticised the Fiji government’s stance over Israel’s genocide in Gaza, saying it “starkly contrasts” with the United Nations and international community’s condemnation as a violation of international law and an impediment to peace.

    In a statement today, the NGO Coalition said that the way the government was responding to the genocide and war crimes in Gaza would set a precedent for how it would deal with crises and conflict in future.

    It would be a marker for human rights responses both at home and the rest of the world.

    “We are now seeing whether our country will be a force that works to uphold human rights and international law, or one that tramples on them whenever convenient,” the statement said.

    “Fiji’s position on the genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestinians starkly contrasts with the values of justice, freedom, and international law that the Fijian people hold dear.

    “The genocide and colonial occupation have been widely recognised by the international community, including the United Nations, as a violation of international law and an impediment to peace and the self-determination of the Palestinian people.”

    Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron announced that France would formally recognise the state of Palestine — the first of G7 countries to do so — at the UN general Assembly in September.

    142 countries recognise Palestine
    At least 142 countries out of the 193 members of the UN currently recognise or plan to recognise a Palestinian state, including European Union members Norway, Ireland, Spain and Slovenia.

    However, several powerful Western countries have refused to do so, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany.

    At the UN this week, Saudi Arabia and France opened a three-day conference with the goal of recognising Palestinian statehood as part of a peaceful settlement to end the war in Gaza.

    Last year, Fiji’s coalition government submitted a written statement in support of the Israeli genocidal occupation of Palestine, including East Jerusalem, noted the NGO coalition.

    Last month, Fiji’s coalition government again voted against a UN General Assembly resolution that demanded an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire in Gaza.

    Also recently, the Fiji government approved the allocation of $1.12 million to establish an embassy “in the genocidal terror state of Israel as Fijians grapple with urgent issues, including poverty, violence against women and girls, deteriorating water and health infrastructure, drug use, high rates of HIV, poor educational outcomes, climate change, and unfair wages for workers”.

    Met with ‘indifference’
    The NGO coalition said that it had made repeated requests to the Fiji government to “do the bare minimum and enforce the basic tenets of international law on Israel”.

    “We have been calling upon the Fiji government to uphold the principles of peace, justice, and human rights that our nation cherishes,” the statement said.

    “We campaigned, we lobbied, we engaged, and we explained. We showed the evidence, pointed to the law, and asked our leaders to do the right thing.

    “We’ve been met with nothing but indifference.”

    Instead, said the NGO statement, Fiji leaders had met with Israeli government representatives and declared support for a country “committing the most heinous crimes” recognised in international law.

    “Fijian leaders and the Fiji government should not be supporting Israel or setting up an embassy in Israel while Israel continues to bomb refugee tents, kill journalists and medics, and block the delivery of humanitarian aid to a population under relentless siege.

    “No politician in Fiji can claim ignorance of what is happening.”

    62,000 Palestinians killed
    More than 62,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war on Gaza, most of them women and children.

    “Many more have been maimed, traumatised, and displaced. Starvation is being used by Israel as weapon to kill babies and children.

    “Hospitals, churches, mosques,, refugee camps, schools, universities, residential neighbourhoods, water and food facilities have been destroyed.

    “History will judge how we respond as Fijians to this moment.

    “Our rich cultural heritage and shared values teach us the importance of always standing up for what is right, even when it is not popular or convenient.”

    Members of the Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights are Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (chair), Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, Citizens’ Constitutional Forum, femLINKpacific, Social Empowerment and Education Programme, and Diverse Voices and Action (DIVA) for Equality Fiji.

    Also, Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is an observer.

    The NGO coalition said it stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people out of a shared belief in humanity, justice, and the inalienable human rights of every individual.

    “Silence is not an option,” it added.

    Fijians for Palestine Solidarity Network said it supported this NGO coalition statement.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Fiji govt offers NZ$1.5m settlement to former anti-corruption head for ruined career

    By Margot Staunton, RNZ Pacific senior reporter

    The Fiji government looks set to pay around NZ$1.5 million in damages to the disgraced former head of the country’s anti-corruption agency FICAC.

    The state is offering Barbara Malimali an out-of-court settlement after her lawyer lodged a judicial review of her sacking in the High Court in Suva.

    Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka suspended Malimali from her role on May 29, following a damning Commission of Inquiry into her appointment.

    Malimali was described as “universally corrupt” by Justice David Ashton-Lewis, the commissioner of the nine-week investigation, which involved 35 witnesses.

    “She was a pawn in the hands of devious members of government, who wanted any allegations against them or other government members thrown out,” Ashton-Lewis told RNZ Pacific Waves earlier this month.

    Tanya Waqanika, who acts for Malimali, told RNZ Pacific that her client was seeking a “substantial” payout for damages and unpaid dues.

    Waqanika met lawyers from the Attorney-General’s Office in the capital, Suva, on Tuesday after earlier negotiations failed.

    Expected to hear in writing
    She declined to say exactly what was discussed, but said she expected to hear back in writing from the other party the same day.

    A High Court judge has given the government until 3pm on Friday to reach a settlement, otherwise he will rule on the application on Monday.

    “We’ll see what they come up with, that’s the beauty of negotiations, but NZ$1.5 million would be a good amount to play with after your career has been ruined,” Waqanika said.

    “[Malimali’s] career spans over 27 years, but it is now down the drain thanks to Ashton-Lewis and the damage the inquiry report has done.”

    She said Malimali also wanted a public apology, as she was being defamed every day in social media.

    “I don’t expect we’ll get one out of Ashton-Lewis,” she said.

    Adjournment sought
    During a hearing in the High Court on Monday, lawyers for the state sought an adjournment to discuss a settlement with Waqanika.

    However, she opposed this, saying that the government’s legal team had vast resources and they should have been prepared for the hearing.

    Malimali filed a case against President Naiqama Lalabalavu, Rabuka and the Attorney-General on June 13 on the grounds that her suspension was unconstitutional.

    Waqanika said the President suspended her on the advice of the Prime Minister instead of consulting the Judicial Services Commission.

    Government lawyers approached Waqanika offering a compensation deal the same day she lodged a judicial review in the High Court.

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Fiji govt offers NZ$1.5m settlement to former anti-corruption head for ruined career

    By Margot Staunton, RNZ Pacific senior reporter

    The Fiji government looks set to pay around NZ$1.5 million in damages to the disgraced former head of the country’s anti-corruption agency FICAC.

    The state is offering Barbara Malimali an out-of-court settlement after her lawyer lodged a judicial review of her sacking in the High Court in Suva.

    Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka suspended Malimali from her role on May 29, following a damning Commission of Inquiry into her appointment.

    Malimali was described as “universally corrupt” by Justice David Ashton-Lewis, the commissioner of the nine-week investigation, which involved 35 witnesses.

    “She was a pawn in the hands of devious members of government, who wanted any allegations against them or other government members thrown out,” Ashton-Lewis told RNZ Pacific Waves earlier this month.

    Tanya Waqanika, who acts for Malimali, told RNZ Pacific that her client was seeking a “substantial” payout for damages and unpaid dues.

    Waqanika met lawyers from the Attorney-General’s Office in the capital, Suva, on Tuesday after earlier negotiations failed.

    Expected to hear in writing
    She declined to say exactly what was discussed, but said she expected to hear back in writing from the other party the same day.

    A High Court judge has given the government until 3pm on Friday to reach a settlement, otherwise he will rule on the application on Monday.

    “We’ll see what they come up with, that’s the beauty of negotiations, but NZ$1.5 million would be a good amount to play with after your career has been ruined,” Waqanika said.

    “[Malimali’s] career spans over 27 years, but it is now down the drain thanks to Ashton-Lewis and the damage the inquiry report has done.”

    She said Malimali also wanted a public apology, as she was being defamed every day in social media.

    “I don’t expect we’ll get one out of Ashton-Lewis,” she said.

    Adjournment sought
    During a hearing in the High Court on Monday, lawyers for the state sought an adjournment to discuss a settlement with Waqanika.

    However, she opposed this, saying that the government’s legal team had vast resources and they should have been prepared for the hearing.

    Malimali filed a case against President Naiqama Lalabalavu, Rabuka and the Attorney-General on June 13 on the grounds that her suspension was unconstitutional.

    Waqanika said the President suspended her on the advice of the Prime Minister instead of consulting the Judicial Services Commission.

    Government lawyers approached Waqanika offering a compensation deal the same day she lodged a judicial review in the High Court.

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Fiji govt offers NZ$1.5m settlement to former anti-corruption head for ruined career

    By Margot Staunton, RNZ Pacific senior reporter

    The Fiji government looks set to pay around NZ$1.5 million in damages to the disgraced former head of the country’s anti-corruption agency FICAC.

    The state is offering Barbara Malimali an out-of-court settlement after her lawyer lodged a judicial review of her sacking in the High Court in Suva.

    Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka suspended Malimali from her role on May 29, following a damning Commission of Inquiry into her appointment.

    Malimali was described as “universally corrupt” by Justice David Ashton-Lewis, the commissioner of the nine-week investigation, which involved 35 witnesses.

    “She was a pawn in the hands of devious members of government, who wanted any allegations against them or other government members thrown out,” Ashton-Lewis told RNZ Pacific Waves earlier this month.

    Tanya Waqanika, who acts for Malimali, told RNZ Pacific that her client was seeking a “substantial” payout for damages and unpaid dues.

    Waqanika met lawyers from the Attorney-General’s Office in the capital, Suva, on Tuesday after earlier negotiations failed.

    Expected to hear in writing
    She declined to say exactly what was discussed, but said she expected to hear back in writing from the other party the same day.

    A High Court judge has given the government until 3pm on Friday to reach a settlement, otherwise he will rule on the application on Monday.

    “We’ll see what they come up with, that’s the beauty of negotiations, but NZ$1.5 million would be a good amount to play with after your career has been ruined,” Waqanika said.

    “[Malimali’s] career spans over 27 years, but it is now down the drain thanks to Ashton-Lewis and the damage the inquiry report has done.”

    She said Malimali also wanted a public apology, as she was being defamed every day in social media.

    “I don’t expect we’ll get one out of Ashton-Lewis,” she said.

    Adjournment sought
    During a hearing in the High Court on Monday, lawyers for the state sought an adjournment to discuss a settlement with Waqanika.

    However, she opposed this, saying that the government’s legal team had vast resources and they should have been prepared for the hearing.

    Malimali filed a case against President Naiqama Lalabalavu, Rabuka and the Attorney-General on June 13 on the grounds that her suspension was unconstitutional.

    Waqanika said the President suspended her on the advice of the Prime Minister instead of consulting the Judicial Services Commission.

    Government lawyers approached Waqanika offering a compensation deal the same day she lodged a judicial review in the High Court.

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Fiji govt offers NZ$1.5m settlement to former anti-corruption head for ruined career

    By Margot Staunton, RNZ Pacific senior reporter

    The Fiji government looks set to pay around NZ$1.5 million in damages to the disgraced former head of the country’s anti-corruption agency FICAC.

    The state is offering Barbara Malimali an out-of-court settlement after her lawyer lodged a judicial review of her sacking in the High Court in Suva.

    Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka suspended Malimali from her role on May 29, following a damning Commission of Inquiry into her appointment.

    Malimali was described as “universally corrupt” by Justice David Ashton-Lewis, the commissioner of the nine-week investigation, which involved 35 witnesses.

    “She was a pawn in the hands of devious members of government, who wanted any allegations against them or other government members thrown out,” Ashton-Lewis told RNZ Pacific Waves earlier this month.

    Tanya Waqanika, who acts for Malimali, told RNZ Pacific that her client was seeking a “substantial” payout for damages and unpaid dues.

    Waqanika met lawyers from the Attorney-General’s Office in the capital, Suva, on Tuesday after earlier negotiations failed.

    Expected to hear in writing
    She declined to say exactly what was discussed, but said she expected to hear back in writing from the other party the same day.

    A High Court judge has given the government until 3pm on Friday to reach a settlement, otherwise he will rule on the application on Monday.

    “We’ll see what they come up with, that’s the beauty of negotiations, but NZ$1.5 million would be a good amount to play with after your career has been ruined,” Waqanika said.

    “[Malimali’s] career spans over 27 years, but it is now down the drain thanks to Ashton-Lewis and the damage the inquiry report has done.”

    She said Malimali also wanted a public apology, as she was being defamed every day in social media.

    “I don’t expect we’ll get one out of Ashton-Lewis,” she said.

    Adjournment sought
    During a hearing in the High Court on Monday, lawyers for the state sought an adjournment to discuss a settlement with Waqanika.

    However, she opposed this, saying that the government’s legal team had vast resources and they should have been prepared for the hearing.

    Malimali filed a case against President Naiqama Lalabalavu, Rabuka and the Attorney-General on June 13 on the grounds that her suspension was unconstitutional.

    Waqanika said the President suspended her on the advice of the Prime Minister instead of consulting the Judicial Services Commission.

    Government lawyers approached Waqanika offering a compensation deal the same day she lodged a judicial review in the High Court.

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Author condemns ‘callous’ health legacy of French, US nuclear bomb tests in Pacific

    Asia Pacific Report

    A journalist who was on the Rainbow Warrior voyage to Rongelap last night condemned France for its “callous” attack of an environmental ship, saying “we haven’t forgotten, or forgiven this outrage”.

    David Robie, the author of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, said at the launch that the consequences of almost 300 US and French nuclear tests – many of them “dirty bombs” — were still impacting on indigenous Pacific peoples 40 years after the bombing of the ship.

    French saboteurs had killed “our shipmate Fernando Pereira” on 10 July 1985 in what the New Zealand prime minister at the time, David Lange, called a “sordid act of international state-backed terrorism”.

    Although relations with France had perhaps mellowed over time, four decades ago there was a lot of hostility towards the country, Dr Robie said.

    “And that act of mindless sabotage still rankles very deeply in our psyche,” he said at the launch in Auckland Central’s Ellen Melville Centre on the anniversary of July 10.

    About 100 people gathered in the centre’s Pioneer Women’s Hall for the book launch as Dr Robie reflected on the case of state terrorism after Greenpeace earlier in the day held a memorial ceremony on board Rainbow Warrior III.

    “One of the celebrated French newspapers, Le Monde, played a critical role in the investigation into the Rainbow Warrior affair — what I brand as ‘Blundergate’, in view of all the follies of the bumbling DGSE spy team,” he said.

    Plantu cartoon
    “And one of the cartoons in that newspaper, by Plantu, who is a sort of French equivalent to Michael Leunig, caught my eye.

    “You will notice it in the background slide show behind me. It shows François Mitterrand, the president of the French republic at the time, dressed in a frogman’s wetsuit lecturing to school children during a history lesson.

    “President Mitterrand says, in French, ‘At that time, only presidents had the right to carry out terrorism!’

    Tahitian advocate Ena Manurevia . . . the background Plantu cartoon is the one mentioned by the author. Image: Asia Pacific Report

    He noticed that in the Mitterrand cartoon there was a “classmate” sitting in the back of the room with a moustache. This was none other than Edwy Plenel, the police reporter for Le Monde at the time, who scooped the world with hard evidence of Mitterrand and the French government’s role at the highest level in the Rainbow Warrior sabotage.

    Dr Robie said that Plenel now published the investigative website Mediapart, which had played a key role in 2015 revealing the identity of the bomber that night, “the man who had planted the limpet mines on the Rainbow Warrior — sinking a peace and environmental ship, and killing Fernando Pereira.”

    Jean-Luc Kister, a retired French colonel and DGSE secret agent, had confessed to his role and “apologised”, claiming the sabotage operation was “disproportionate and a mistake”.

    “Was he sincere? Was it a genuine attempt to come to terms with his conscience. Who knows?” Dr Robie said, adding that he was unconvinced.

    Hilari Anderson (right on stage), one of the speakers, with Del Abcede and MC Antony Phillips (obscured) . . . the background image shows Helen Clark meeting Fernando Pereira’s daughter Marelle in 2005. Image: Greenpeace

    French perspective
    Dr Robie said he had asked Plenel for his reflections from a French perspective 40 years on. Plenel cited three main take ways.

    “First, the vital necessity of independent journalism. Independent of all powers, whether state, economic or ideological. Journalism that serves the public interest, the right to know, and factual truths.

    “Impactful journalism whose revelations restore confidence in democracy, in the possibility of improving it, and in the usefulness of counterbalancing powers, particularly journalism.”

    Secondly, this attack had been carried out by France in an “allied country”, New Zealand, against a civil society organisation. This demonstrated that “the thirst for power is a downfall that leads nations astray when they succumb to it.

    “Nuclear weapons epitomise this madness, this catastrophe of power.”

    Finally, Plenel expressed the “infinite sadness” for a French citizen that after his revelations in Le Monde — which led to the resignations of the defence minister and the head of the secret services — nothing else happened.

    “Nothing at all. No parliamentary inquiry, no questioning of François Mitterrand about his responsibility, no institutional reform of the absolute power of the president in a French republic that is, in reality, an elective monarchy.”

    ‘Elective monarchy’ trend
    Dr Robie compared the French outcome with the rapid trend in US today, “a president who thinks he is a monarch, a king – another elective monarchy.”

    He also bemoaned that “catastrophe of power” that “reigns everywhere today – from the horrendous Israeli genocide in Gaza to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, from Trump to Putin to Netanyahu, and so many others.”

    The continuous Gaza massacres were a shameful indictment of the West that had allowed it to happen for more than 21 months.

    Dr Robie thanked many collaborators for their help and support, including drama teacher Hilari Anderson, an original crew member of the Rainbow Warrior, and photographer John Miller, “who have been with me all the way on this waka journey”.

    He thanked his wife, Del, and family members for their unstinting “patience and support”, and also publisher Tony Murrow of Little Island Press.

    Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior . . . published 10 July 2025. Image: David Robie/Little Island Press

    Launching the book, Greenpeace Aotearoa programme director Niamh O’Flynn said one thing that had stood out for her was how the legacy of the Rainbow Warrior had continued despite the attempt by the French government to shut it down 40 years ago.

    “We said then that ‘you can’t sink a rainbow’, and we went on to prove it.

    “When the Rainbow Warrior was bombed in Auckland harbour, it was getting ready to set sail to Moruroa Atoll, to enter the test exclusion zone and confront French nuclear testing head-on.”

    So threatened
    The French government had felt so threatened by that action that it had engaged in a state-sanctioned terror attack to prevent the mission from going ahead.

    “But we rebuilt, and the Rainbow Warrior II carried on with that mission, travelling to Moruroa three times before the French finally stopped nuclear testing in the Pacific.

    “That spirit and tenacity is what makes Greenpeace and what makes the Rainbow Warrior so special to everyone who has sailed on her,” she said.

    “It was the final voyage of the Rainbow Warrior to Rongelap before the bombing that is the focus of David Robie’s book, and in many ways, it was an incredibly unique experience for Greenpeace — not just here in Aotearoa, but internationally.

    “And of course David was a key part in that.”

    O’Flynn said that as someone who had not even been born yet when the Rainbow Warrior was bombed, “I am so grateful that the generation of nuclear-free activists took the time to pass on their knowledge and to build our organisation into what it is today.

    “Just as David has by writing down his story and leaving us with such a rich legacy.”

    Greenpeace Aotearoa programme director Niamh O’Flynn . . . “That spirit and tenacity is what makes Greenpeace and what makes the Rainbow Warrior so special to everyone who has sailed on her.” Image: APR

    Other speakers
    Among other speakers at the book launch were teacher Hilari Anderson, publisher Tony Murrow of Little Island Press, Ena Manuireva, a Mangarevian scholar and cultural adviser, and MC Antony Phillips of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.

    Anderson spoke of the Warrior’s early campaigns and acknowledged the crews of 1978 and 1985.

    “I have been reflecting what these first and last crews of the original Rainbow Warrior had in common, realising that both gave their collective, mostly youthful energy — to transformation.

    “This has involved the bonding of crews by working hands-on together. Touching surfaces, by hammer and paint, created a physical connection to this beloved boat.”

    She paid special tribute to two powerful women, Denise Bell, who tracked down the marine research vessel in Aberdeen that became the Rainbow Warrior, and the indomitable Susi Newborn, who “contributed to naming the ship and mustering a crew”.

    Manuireva spoke about his nuclear colonial experience and that of his family as natives of Mangareva atoll, about 400 km from Muroroa atoll, where France conducted most of its 30 years of tests ending in 1995.

    He also spoke of Tahitian leader Oscar Temaru’s pioneering role in the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement, and played haunting Tahitian songs on his guitar.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Author condemns ‘callous’ health legacy of French, US nuclear bomb tests in Pacific

    Asia Pacific Report

    A journalist who was on the Rainbow Warrior voyage to Rongelap last night condemned France for its “callous” attack of an environmental ship, saying “we haven’t forgotten, or forgiven this outrage”.

    David Robie, the author of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, said at the launch that the consequences of almost 300 US and French nuclear tests – many of them “dirty bombs” — were still impacting on indigenous Pacific peoples 40 years after the bombing of the ship.

    French saboteurs had killed “our shipmate Fernando Pereira” on 10 July 1985 in what the New Zealand prime minister at the time, David Lange, called a “sordid act of international state-backed terrorism”.

    Although relations with France had perhaps mellowed over time, four decades ago there was a lot of hostility towards the country, Dr Robie said.

    “And that act of mindless sabotage still rankles very deeply in our psyche,” he said at the launch in Auckland Central’s Ellen Melville Centre on the anniversary of July 10.

    About 100 people gathered in the centre’s Pioneer Women’s Hall for the book launch as Dr Robie reflected on the case of state terrorism after Greenpeace earlier in the day held a memorial ceremony on board Rainbow Warrior III.

    “One of the celebrated French newspapers, Le Monde, played a critical role in the investigation into the Rainbow Warrior affair — what I brand as ‘Blundergate’, in view of all the follies of the bumbling DGSE spy team,” he said.

    Plantu cartoon
    “And one of the cartoons in that newspaper, by Plantu, who is a sort of French equivalent to Michael Leunig, caught my eye.

    “You will notice it in the background slide show behind me. It shows François Mitterrand, the president of the French republic at the time, dressed in a frogman’s wetsuit lecturing to school children during a history lesson.

    “President Mitterrand says, in French, ‘At that time, only presidents had the right to carry out terrorism!’

    Tahitian advocate Ena Manurevia . . . the background Plantu cartoon is the one mentioned by the author. Image: Asia Pacific Report

    He noticed that in the Mitterrand cartoon there was a “classmate” sitting in the back of the room with a moustache. This was none other than Edwy Plenel, the police reporter for Le Monde at the time, who scooped the world with hard evidence of Mitterrand and the French government’s role at the highest level in the Rainbow Warrior sabotage.

    Dr Robie said that Plenel now published the investigative website Mediapart, which had played a key role in 2015 revealing the identity of the bomber that night, “the man who had planted the limpet mines on the Rainbow Warrior — sinking a peace and environmental ship, and killing Fernando Pereira.”

    Jean-Luc Kister, a retired French colonel and DGSE secret agent, had confessed to his role and “apologised”, claiming the sabotage operation was “disproportionate and a mistake”.

    “Was he sincere? Was it a genuine attempt to come to terms with his conscience. Who knows?” Dr Robie said, adding that he was unconvinced.

    Hilari Anderson (right on stage), one of the speakers, with Del Abcede and MC Antony Phillips (obscured) . . . the background image shows Helen Clark meeting Fernando Pereira’s daughter Marelle in 2005. Image: Greenpeace

    French perspective
    Dr Robie said he had asked Plenel for his reflections from a French perspective 40 years on. Plenel cited three main take ways.

    “First, the vital necessity of independent journalism. Independent of all powers, whether state, economic or ideological. Journalism that serves the public interest, the right to know, and factual truths.

    “Impactful journalism whose revelations restore confidence in democracy, in the possibility of improving it, and in the usefulness of counterbalancing powers, particularly journalism.”

    Secondly, this attack had been carried out by France in an “allied country”, New Zealand, against a civil society organisation. This demonstrated that “the thirst for power is a downfall that leads nations astray when they succumb to it.

    “Nuclear weapons epitomise this madness, this catastrophe of power.”

    Finally, Plenel expressed the “infinite sadness” for a French citizen that after his revelations in Le Monde — which led to the resignations of the defence minister and the head of the secret services — nothing else happened.

    “Nothing at all. No parliamentary inquiry, no questioning of François Mitterrand about his responsibility, no institutional reform of the absolute power of the president in a French republic that is, in reality, an elective monarchy.”

    ‘Elective monarchy’ trend
    Dr Robie compared the French outcome with the rapid trend in US today, “a president who thinks he is a monarch, a king – another elective monarchy.”

    He also bemoaned that “catastrophe of power” that “reigns everywhere today – from the horrendous Israeli genocide in Gaza to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, from Trump to Putin to Netanyahu, and so many others.”

    The continuous Gaza massacres were a shameful indictment of the West that had allowed it to happen for more than 21 months.

    Dr Robie thanked many collaborators for their help and support, including drama teacher Hilari Anderson, an original crew member of the Rainbow Warrior, and photographer John Miller, “who have been with me all the way on this waka journey”.

    He thanked his wife, Del, and family members for their unstinting “patience and support”, and also publisher Tony Murrow of Little Island Press.

    Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior . . . published 10 July 2025. Image: David Robie/Little Island Press

    Launching the book, Greenpeace Aotearoa programme director Niamh O’Flynn said one thing that had stood out for her was how the legacy of the Rainbow Warrior had continued despite the attempt by the French government to shut it down 40 years ago.

    “We said then that ‘you can’t sink a rainbow’, and we went on to prove it.

    “When the Rainbow Warrior was bombed in Auckland harbour, it was getting ready to set sail to Moruroa Atoll, to enter the test exclusion zone and confront French nuclear testing head-on.”

    So threatened
    The French government had felt so threatened by that action that it had engaged in a state-sanctioned terror attack to prevent the mission from going ahead.

    “But we rebuilt, and the Rainbow Warrior II carried on with that mission, travelling to Moruroa three times before the French finally stopped nuclear testing in the Pacific.

    “That spirit and tenacity is what makes Greenpeace and what makes the Rainbow Warrior so special to everyone who has sailed on her,” she said.

    “It was the final voyage of the Rainbow Warrior to Rongelap before the bombing that is the focus of David Robie’s book, and in many ways, it was an incredibly unique experience for Greenpeace — not just here in Aotearoa, but internationally.

    “And of course David was a key part in that.”

    O’Flynn said that as someone who had not even been born yet when the Rainbow Warrior was bombed, “I am so grateful that the generation of nuclear-free activists took the time to pass on their knowledge and to build our organisation into what it is today.

    “Just as David has by writing down his story and leaving us with such a rich legacy.”

    Greenpeace Aotearoa programme director Niamh O’Flynn . . . “That spirit and tenacity is what makes Greenpeace and what makes the Rainbow Warrior so special to everyone who has sailed on her.” Image: APR

    Other speakers
    Among other speakers at the book launch were teacher Hilari Anderson, publisher Tony Murrow of Little Island Press, Ena Manuireva, a Mangarevian scholar and cultural adviser, and MC Antony Phillips of Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.

    Anderson spoke of the Warrior’s early campaigns and acknowledged the crews of 1978 and 1985.

    “I have been reflecting what these first and last crews of the original Rainbow Warrior had in common, realising that both gave their collective, mostly youthful energy — to transformation.

    “This has involved the bonding of crews by working hands-on together. Touching surfaces, by hammer and paint, created a physical connection to this beloved boat.”

    She paid special tribute to two powerful women, Denise Bell, who tracked down the marine research vessel in Aberdeen that became the Rainbow Warrior, and the indomitable Susi Newborn, who “contributed to naming the ship and mustering a crew”.

    Manuireva spoke about his nuclear colonial experience and that of his family as natives of Mangareva atoll, about 400 km from Muroroa atoll, where France conducted most of its 30 years of tests ending in 1995.

    He also spoke of Tahitian leader Oscar Temaru’s pioneering role in the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement, and played haunting Tahitian songs on his guitar.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: NZDF not considering recruiting personnel from Pacific nations

    By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist

    The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) is not considering recruiting personnel from across the Pacific as talk continues of Australia doing so for its Defence Force (ADF).

    In response to a question from The Australian at the National Press Club in Canberra about Australia’s plans to potentially recruit from the Pacific Islands into the ADF, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said he “would like to see it happen”.

    “Whether Australia does it or not depends on your own policies. We will not push it.”

    RNZ Pacific asked the NZDF under the Official Information Act (OIA) for all correspondence sent and received regarding any discussion on recruiting from the Pacific, along with other related questions.

    The OIA request was declined as the information did not exist.

    “Defence Recruiting has not and is not considering deliberate recruiting action from across the Pacific,” the response from the NZDF said.

    Australia Defence Association executive director Neil James said citizenship needed to be a prerequisite to Pacific recruitment.

    Australian citizen
    “Even a New Zealander serving in the Australian military has to become an Australian citizen,” James said.

    “They can start off being an Australian resident, but they’ve got to be on the path to citizenship.

    ”They’ve got to be capable of getting permanent residency in Australia and citizenship.

    “And then you’ve got to tackle the moral problem — it’s pretty hard to ask foreigners to fight for your country when your own people won’t do it.”

    James said he thought people might be “jumping at hairs” at Rabuka’s comments.

    Unlike Samoa’s acting prime minister, who has voiced concern over a brain drain, both Papua New Guinea and Fiji have made it clear they have people to spare.

    Ross Thompson, a managing director at People In, the largest approved employer in the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme, said if the recruitment drive does go ahead, PNG nationals would return home with a wider skill set.

    ‘Brain gain, not drain’
    “This would be a brain gain, rather than be a drain on PNG.”

    He’s spoken with people in PNG who welcome the proposal.

    ”PNG, its population is over 10 million . . . We’re proposing from PNG around 1000 could be recruited every year.”

    Minister Rabuka joked Fiji could plug Australia’s personnel hole on its own.

    “If it’s open [to recruiting Fijians] . . . [we will offer] the whole lot . . . 5000,” he said, while noting that Fiji was able to easily fill its quota under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme.

    “The villages are emptying out into the cities. What we would like to do is to reduce those who are ending up in settlements in the cities and not working, giving way to crime and becoming first victims to the sale of drugs and AIDS and HIV from frequently used or commonly used needles.”

    Thompson was also a captain in the Queen’s Gurkha Engineers of the British Army and said he was proud to have served alongside Fijians.

    Honour serving
    “I had the honour to serve with a number of Fijians while deployed overseas; they’re fantastic soldiers.

    “This is something that’s been going on since the Second World War and it’s a big part of the British Army.”

    From a recruitment perspective, he said PNG and Fiji would be a good starting point before extending to any other Pacific nations.

    ”PNG has a strong history with the Australian Defence Force. There’s a number of programmes that are currently ongoing, on shared military exercises, there’s PNG officers that are serving in the ADF now, or on secondment to the ADF.

    “So I think those two countries are definitely good to look up from a pilot perspective.”

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: NZDF not considering recruiting personnel from Pacific nations

    By Caleb Fotheringham, RNZ Pacific journalist

    The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) is not considering recruiting personnel from across the Pacific as talk continues of Australia doing so for its Defence Force (ADF).

    In response to a question from The Australian at the National Press Club in Canberra about Australia’s plans to potentially recruit from the Pacific Islands into the ADF, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka said he “would like to see it happen”.

    “Whether Australia does it or not depends on your own policies. We will not push it.”

    RNZ Pacific asked the NZDF under the Official Information Act (OIA) for all correspondence sent and received regarding any discussion on recruiting from the Pacific, along with other related questions.

    The OIA request was declined as the information did not exist.

    “Defence Recruiting has not and is not considering deliberate recruiting action from across the Pacific,” the response from the NZDF said.

    Australia Defence Association executive director Neil James said citizenship needed to be a prerequisite to Pacific recruitment.

    Australian citizen
    “Even a New Zealander serving in the Australian military has to become an Australian citizen,” James said.

    “They can start off being an Australian resident, but they’ve got to be on the path to citizenship.

    ”They’ve got to be capable of getting permanent residency in Australia and citizenship.

    “And then you’ve got to tackle the moral problem — it’s pretty hard to ask foreigners to fight for your country when your own people won’t do it.”

    James said he thought people might be “jumping at hairs” at Rabuka’s comments.

    Unlike Samoa’s acting prime minister, who has voiced concern over a brain drain, both Papua New Guinea and Fiji have made it clear they have people to spare.

    Ross Thompson, a managing director at People In, the largest approved employer in the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme, said if the recruitment drive does go ahead, PNG nationals would return home with a wider skill set.

    ‘Brain gain, not drain’
    “This would be a brain gain, rather than be a drain on PNG.”

    He’s spoken with people in PNG who welcome the proposal.

    ”PNG, its population is over 10 million . . . We’re proposing from PNG around 1000 could be recruited every year.”

    Minister Rabuka joked Fiji could plug Australia’s personnel hole on its own.

    “If it’s open [to recruiting Fijians] . . . [we will offer] the whole lot . . . 5000,” he said, while noting that Fiji was able to easily fill its quota under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme.

    “The villages are emptying out into the cities. What we would like to do is to reduce those who are ending up in settlements in the cities and not working, giving way to crime and becoming first victims to the sale of drugs and AIDS and HIV from frequently used or commonly used needles.”

    Thompson was also a captain in the Queen’s Gurkha Engineers of the British Army and said he was proud to have served alongside Fijians.

    Honour serving
    “I had the honour to serve with a number of Fijians while deployed overseas; they’re fantastic soldiers.

    “This is something that’s been going on since the Second World War and it’s a big part of the British Army.”

    From a recruitment perspective, he said PNG and Fiji would be a good starting point before extending to any other Pacific nations.

    ”PNG has a strong history with the Australian Defence Force. There’s a number of programmes that are currently ongoing, on shared military exercises, there’s PNG officers that are serving in the ADF now, or on secondment to the ADF.

    “So I think those two countries are definitely good to look up from a pilot perspective.”

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Greenpeace chief recalls New Zealand’s nuclear free exploits, seeks ‘peace’ voice for Gaza

    Asia Pacific Report

    Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman today recalled New Zealand’s heyday as a Pacific nuclear free champion in the 1980s, and challenged the country to again become a leading voice for “peace and justice”, this time for the Palestinian people.

    He told the weekly Palestinian solidarity rally in Auckland’s central Te Komititanga Square that it was time for New Zealand to take action and recognise the state of Palestine and impose sanctions on Israel over its Gaza atrocities.

    “From 1946 to 1996, over 300 nuclear weapons were exploded across the Pacific and consistently the New Zealand government spoke out against it,” he said.

    “It took cases to the International Court of Justice, supported by Australia and Fiji, against the nuclear testing across the Pacific.

    “Aotearoa New Zealand was a voice for peace, it was a voice for justice, and when the French government bombed the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior here and killed Fernando Pereira, it spoke out and took action against France.”

    He said New Zealand could return to that global leadership as a small and peaceful country.

    New Zealand will this week be commemorating the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French secret agents on 10 July 1985 and the killing of Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.

    Dawn vigil on Greenpeace III
    Greenpeace plans a dawn vigil on board their current flagship Rainbow Warrior III at Halsey Wharf.

    He spoke about the Gaza war crimes, saying it was time for New Zealand to take serious action to help end this 20 months of settler colonial genocide.

    “There are millions of people [around the world] who are trying to end this colonial occupation of Palestinian land,” Norman said.

    “And millions of people who are trying to stop people simply standing to get food who are hungry who are being shelled and killed by the Israeli military simply for the ‘crime’ of being born in the land that Israel wants to occupy.”

    Rocket Lab . . . a target for protests this week against the Gaza genocide. Image: David Robie/APR

    Norman’s message echoed an open letter that he wrote to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters earlier this week criticising the government for its “ongoing failure … to impose meaningful sanctions on Israel”.

    He cited the recent UN Human Rights Office report that said the killing of hundreds of Palestinians by the Israeli military while trying to fetch food from the controversial new “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” aid hubs was a ‘likely war crime”.

    “Israel’s ongoing blockade of aid to Gaza has placed over 2 million people on the precipice of famine. Malnutrition and starvation are rife,” he said.

    Israel ‘weaponising aid’
    “Israel is weaponising aid, using starvation as a tool of genocide and is now shooting at civilians trying to access the scraps of aid that are available.”

    He said this was “catastrophic”, quoting Luxon’s own words, and the human suffering was “unacceptable”.

    Labour MP for Te Atatu and disarmament spokesperson Phil Twyford also spoke at the rally and march today, saying the Labour Party was calling for sanctions and accountability.

    He condemned the failure to hold “the people who have been enabling the genocide in Gaza”.

    “It’s been going on for too long. Not just the last [20 months], but actually the last 77 years.

    “And it is time the Western world snapped out of the spell that the Zionists have had on the Western imagination — at least on the political classes, government MPs, the policy makers in Western countries, who for so long have enabled, have stayed quiet in the face of the US who have armed and funded the genocide”

    For the Palestinian solidarity movement in New Zealand it has been a big week with four politicians — including Prime Minister Luxon — and two business leaders, the chief executives of Rocket Lab and Rakon, who have been referred by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigation over allegations of complicity with the Israeli war crimes.

    This unprecedented legal development has been largely ignored by the mainstream media.

    On Friday, protesters picketed a Rocket Lab manufacturing site in Warkworth, the head office in Mount Wellington and the Māhia peninsula where satellites are launched.

    Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, leading international scholars and the UN Special Committee to investigate Israel’s practices have all condemned Israel’s actions as genocide.

    Palestinian solidarity protesters in Auckland’s Queen Street march today. Image: David Robie/APR

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Greenpeace chief recalls New Zealand’s nuclear free exploits, seeks ‘peace’ voice for Gaza

    Asia Pacific Report

    Greenpeace Aotearoa executive director Russel Norman today recalled New Zealand’s heyday as a Pacific nuclear free champion in the 1980s, and challenged the country to again become a leading voice for “peace and justice”, this time for the Palestinian people.

    He told the weekly Palestinian solidarity rally in Auckland’s central Te Komititanga Square that it was time for New Zealand to take action and recognise the state of Palestine and impose sanctions on Israel over its Gaza atrocities.

    “From 1946 to 1996, over 300 nuclear weapons were exploded across the Pacific and consistently the New Zealand government spoke out against it,” he said.

    “It took cases to the International Court of Justice, supported by Australia and Fiji, against the nuclear testing across the Pacific.

    “Aotearoa New Zealand was a voice for peace, it was a voice for justice, and when the French government bombed the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior here and killed Fernando Pereira, it spoke out and took action against France.”

    He said New Zealand could return to that global leadership as a small and peaceful country.

    New Zealand will this week be commemorating the 40th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior by French secret agents on 10 July 1985 and the killing of Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira.

    Dawn vigil on Greenpeace III
    Greenpeace plans a dawn vigil on board their current flagship Rainbow Warrior III at Halsey Wharf.

    He spoke about the Gaza war crimes, saying it was time for New Zealand to take serious action to help end this 20 months of settler colonial genocide.

    “There are millions of people [around the world] who are trying to end this colonial occupation of Palestinian land,” Norman said.

    “And millions of people who are trying to stop people simply standing to get food who are hungry who are being shelled and killed by the Israeli military simply for the ‘crime’ of being born in the land that Israel wants to occupy.”

    Rocket Lab . . . a target for protests this week against the Gaza genocide. Image: David Robie/APR

    Norman’s message echoed an open letter that he wrote to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters earlier this week criticising the government for its “ongoing failure … to impose meaningful sanctions on Israel”.

    He cited the recent UN Human Rights Office report that said the killing of hundreds of Palestinians by the Israeli military while trying to fetch food from the controversial new “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” aid hubs was a ‘likely war crime”.

    “Israel’s ongoing blockade of aid to Gaza has placed over 2 million people on the precipice of famine. Malnutrition and starvation are rife,” he said.

    Israel ‘weaponising aid’
    “Israel is weaponising aid, using starvation as a tool of genocide and is now shooting at civilians trying to access the scraps of aid that are available.”

    He said this was “catastrophic”, quoting Luxon’s own words, and the human suffering was “unacceptable”.

    Labour MP for Te Atatu and disarmament spokesperson Phil Twyford also spoke at the rally and march today, saying the Labour Party was calling for sanctions and accountability.

    He condemned the failure to hold “the people who have been enabling the genocide in Gaza”.

    “It’s been going on for too long. Not just the last [20 months], but actually the last 77 years.

    “And it is time the Western world snapped out of the spell that the Zionists have had on the Western imagination — at least on the political classes, government MPs, the policy makers in Western countries, who for so long have enabled, have stayed quiet in the face of the US who have armed and funded the genocide”

    For the Palestinian solidarity movement in New Zealand it has been a big week with four politicians — including Prime Minister Luxon — and two business leaders, the chief executives of Rocket Lab and Rakon, who have been referred by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for investigation over allegations of complicity with the Israeli war crimes.

    This unprecedented legal development has been largely ignored by the mainstream media.

    On Friday, protesters picketed a Rocket Lab manufacturing site in Warkworth, the head office in Mount Wellington and the Māhia peninsula where satellites are launched.

    Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, leading international scholars and the UN Special Committee to investigate Israel’s practices have all condemned Israel’s actions as genocide.

    Palestinian solidarity protesters in Auckland’s Queen Street march today. Image: David Robie/APR

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The Rainbow Warrior saga: 1. French state terrorism and NZ’s end of innocence

    COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    Immediately after killing Fernando Pereira and blowing up Greenpeace’s flagship the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, several of the French agents went on a ski holiday in New Zealand’s South Island to celebrate.

    Such was the contempt the French had for the Kiwis and the abilities of our police to pursue them.  How wrong they were.

    To mark the 40th anniversary of the French terrorist attack Little Island Press has published a revised and updated edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, first released in 1986.

    A new prologue by former prime minister Helen Clark and a preface by Greenpeace’s Bunny McDiarmid, along with an extensive postscript which bring us up to the present day, underline why the past is not dead; it’s with us right now.

    Written by David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report, who spent 11 weeks on the final voyage of the Warrior, the book is the most remarkable piece of history I have read this year and one of those rare books that has the power to expand your mind and make your blood boil at the same time. I thought I knew a fair bit about the momentous events surrounding the attack — until I read Eyes of Fire.

    Heroes of our age
     The book covers the history of Greenpeace action — from fighting the dumping of nuclear and other toxic waste in European waters, the Arctic and the Pacific, voyages to link besieged communities across the oceans, through to their epic struggles to halt whaling and save endangered marine colonies from predators.

    The Rainbow Warrior’s very last voyage before the bombing was to evacuate the entire population of Rongelap atoll (about 320 people) in the Marshall Islands who had been exposed to US nuclear radiation for decades.

    This article is the first of two in which I will explore themes that the book triggered for me.

    Neither secret nor intelligent – the French secret intelligence service

    Jean-Luc Kister was the DGSE (Direction-générale de la Sécurité extérieure) agent who placed the two bombs that ripped a massive hole in the hull of the Warrior on 10 July 1985. The ship quickly sank, trapping Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira inside.

    Former colonel Kister was a member of a large team of elite agents sent to New Zealand. One had also infiltrated Greenpeace months before, some travelled through the country prior to the attack, drinking, rooting New Zealand women and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that led all the way to the Palais de l’Élysée where François Mitterrand, Socialist President of France, had personally given the order to bomb the famous peace vessel.

    Robie aptly calls the French mission “Blundergate”. The stupidity, howling incompetence and moronic lack of a sound strategic rationale behind the attack were only matched by the mendacity, the imperial hauteur and the racist contempt that lies at the heart of French policy in the Pacific to this very day.

    Thinking the Kiwi police would be no match for their élan, their savoir-faire and their panache, some of the killers hit the ski slopes to celebrate “Mission Accompli”. Others fled to Norfolk Island aboard a yacht, the Ouvéa.

    Tracked there by the New Zealand police it was only with the assistance of our friends and allies, the Australians, that the agents were able to escape. Within days they sank their yacht at sea during a rendezvous with a French nuclear submarine and were evenually able to return to France for medals and promotions.

    Two of the agents, however, were not so lucky. As everyone my age will recall, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, were nabbed after a lightning fast operation by New Zealand police.

    With friends and allies like these, who needs enemies?
     We should recall that the French were our allies at the time. They decided, however, to stop the Rainbow Warrior from leading a flotilla of ships up to Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia where yet another round of nuclear tests were scheduled. In other words: they bombed a peace ship to keep testing bombs.

    By 1995, France had detonated 193 nuclear bombs in the South Pacific.

    David Robie sees the bombing as “a desperate attempt by one of the last colonial powers in the Pacific to hang on to the vestiges of empire by blowing up a peace ship so it could continue despoiling Pacific islands for the sake of an independent nuclear force”.

    The US, UK and Australia cold-shouldered New Zealand through this period and uttered not a word of condemnation against the French. Within two years we were frog-marched out of the ANZUS alliance with Australia and the US because of our ground-breaking nuclear-free legislation.

    It was a blessing and the dawn of a period in which New Zealanders had an intense sense of national pride — a far cry from today when New Zealand politicians are being referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for war crimes associated with the Gaza genocide.

    Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior . . . publication next week. Image: ©  David Robie/Eyes Of Fire/Little Island Press

    The French State invented the term ‘terrorism’
     I studied French History at university in France and did a paper called “La France à la veille de révolution” (France on the eve of revolution). One of the chilling cultural memories is of the period from September 1793 to July 1794, which was known as La Terreur.

    At the time the French state literally coined the term “terrorisme” — with the blade of the guillotine dropping on neck after neck as the state tried to consolidate power through terror. But, as Robie points out, quoting law professor Roger S. Clark, we tend to use the term today to refer almost exclusively to non-state actors.

    With the US and Israel gunning down starving civilians in Gaza every day, with wave after wave of terror attacks being committed inside Iran and across the Middle East by Mossad, the CIA and MI6, we should amend this erroneous habit.

    The DGSE team who attached limpet mines to the Rainbow Warrior did so as psychopathic servants of the French State. Eyes of Fire: “At the time, Prime Minister David Lange described the Rainbow Warrior attack as ‘nothing more than a sordid act of international state-backed terrorism’.”

    Don’t get me wrong. I am not “anti-French”. I lived for years in France, had a French girlfriend, studied French history, language and literature. I even had friends in Wellington who worked at the French Embassy.

    Curiously when I lived next to Premier House, the official residence of the prime minister, my other next door neighbour was a French agent who specialised in surveillance. Our houses backed onto Premier House. Quelle coïncidence. To his mild consternation I’d greet him with “Salut, mon espion favori.” (Hello, my favourite spy).

    What I despise is French colonialism, French racism, and what the French call magouillage. I don’t know a good English word for it . . .  it is a mix of shenanigans, duplicity, artful deception to achieve unscrupulous outcomes that can’t be publicly avowed. In brief: what the French attempted in Auckland in 1985.

    Robie recounts in detail the lying, smokescreens and roadblocks that everyone from President Mitterrand through to junior officials put in the way of the New Zealand investigators. Mitterrand gave Prime Minister David Lange assurances that the culprits would be brought to justice. The French Embassy in Wellington claimed at the time: “In no way is France involved. The French government doesn’t deal with its opponents in such ways.”

    It took years for the bombshell to explode that none other than Mitterrand himself had ordered the terrorist attack on New Zealand and Greenpeace!

    Rainbow Warrior III . . . the current successor to the bombed ship. Photographed at Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands in April 2025. Image: © Bianca Vitale/Greenpeace

    We the people of the Pacific
     We, the people of the Pacific, owe a debt to Greenpeace and all those who were part of the Rainbow Warrior, including author David Robie. We must remember the crime and call it by its name: state terrorism.

    The French attempted to escape justice, deny involvement and then welched on the terms of the agreement negotiated with the help of the United Nations secretary-general.

    A great way to honour the sacrifice of those who stood up for justice, who stood for peace and a nuclear-free Pacific, and who honoured our own national identity would be to buy David Robie’s excellent book.

    I’ll give the last word to former Prime Minister Helen Clark:

    “This is the time for New Zealand to link with the many small and middle powers across regions who have a vision for a world characterised by solidarity and peace and which can rise to the occasion to combat the existential challenges it faces — including of nuclear weapons, climate change, and artificial intelligence. If our independent foreign policy is to mean anything in the mid-2020s, it must be based on concerted diplomacy for peace and sustainable development.”

    You cannot sink a rainbow.

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: The Rainbow Warrior saga: 1. French state terrorism and NZ’s end of innocence

    COMMENTARY: By Eugene Doyle

    Immediately after killing Fernando Pereira and blowing up Greenpeace’s flagship the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland harbour, several of the French agents went on a ski holiday in New Zealand’s South Island to celebrate.

    Such was the contempt the French had for the Kiwis and the abilities of our police to pursue them.  How wrong they were.

    To mark the 40th anniversary of the French terrorist attack Little Island Press has published a revised and updated edition of Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior, first released in 1986.

    A new prologue by former prime minister Helen Clark and a preface by Greenpeace’s Bunny McDiarmid, along with an extensive postscript which bring us up to the present day, underline why the past is not dead; it’s with us right now.

    Written by David Robie, editor of Asia Pacific Report, who spent 11 weeks on the final voyage of the Warrior, the book is the most remarkable piece of history I have read this year and one of those rare books that has the power to expand your mind and make your blood boil at the same time. I thought I knew a fair bit about the momentous events surrounding the attack — until I read Eyes of Fire.

    Heroes of our age
     The book covers the history of Greenpeace action — from fighting the dumping of nuclear and other toxic waste in European waters, the Arctic and the Pacific, voyages to link besieged communities across the oceans, through to their epic struggles to halt whaling and save endangered marine colonies from predators.

    The Rainbow Warrior’s very last voyage before the bombing was to evacuate the entire population of Rongelap atoll (about 320 people) in the Marshall Islands who had been exposed to US nuclear radiation for decades.

    This article is the first of two in which I will explore themes that the book triggered for me.

    Neither secret nor intelligent – the French secret intelligence service

    Jean-Luc Kister was the DGSE (Direction-générale de la Sécurité extérieure) agent who placed the two bombs that ripped a massive hole in the hull of the Warrior on 10 July 1985. The ship quickly sank, trapping Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira inside.

    Former colonel Kister was a member of a large team of elite agents sent to New Zealand. One had also infiltrated Greenpeace months before, some travelled through the country prior to the attack, drinking, rooting New Zealand women and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs that led all the way to the Palais de l’Élysée where François Mitterrand, Socialist President of France, had personally given the order to bomb the famous peace vessel.

    Robie aptly calls the French mission “Blundergate”. The stupidity, howling incompetence and moronic lack of a sound strategic rationale behind the attack were only matched by the mendacity, the imperial hauteur and the racist contempt that lies at the heart of French policy in the Pacific to this very day.

    Thinking the Kiwi police would be no match for their élan, their savoir-faire and their panache, some of the killers hit the ski slopes to celebrate “Mission Accompli”. Others fled to Norfolk Island aboard a yacht, the Ouvéa.

    Tracked there by the New Zealand police it was only with the assistance of our friends and allies, the Australians, that the agents were able to escape. Within days they sank their yacht at sea during a rendezvous with a French nuclear submarine and were evenually able to return to France for medals and promotions.

    Two of the agents, however, were not so lucky. As everyone my age will recall, Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, were nabbed after a lightning fast operation by New Zealand police.

    With friends and allies like these, who needs enemies?
     We should recall that the French were our allies at the time. They decided, however, to stop the Rainbow Warrior from leading a flotilla of ships up to Moruroa Atoll in French Polynesia where yet another round of nuclear tests were scheduled. In other words: they bombed a peace ship to keep testing bombs.

    By 1995, France had detonated 193 nuclear bombs in the South Pacific.

    David Robie sees the bombing as “a desperate attempt by one of the last colonial powers in the Pacific to hang on to the vestiges of empire by blowing up a peace ship so it could continue despoiling Pacific islands for the sake of an independent nuclear force”.

    The US, UK and Australia cold-shouldered New Zealand through this period and uttered not a word of condemnation against the French. Within two years we were frog-marched out of the ANZUS alliance with Australia and the US because of our ground-breaking nuclear-free legislation.

    It was a blessing and the dawn of a period in which New Zealanders had an intense sense of national pride — a far cry from today when New Zealand politicians are being referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for war crimes associated with the Gaza genocide.

    Eyes of Fire: The Last Voyage and Legacy of the Rainbow Warrior . . . publication next week. Image: ©  David Robie/Eyes Of Fire/Little Island Press

    The French State invented the term ‘terrorism’
     I studied French History at university in France and did a paper called “La France à la veille de révolution” (France on the eve of revolution). One of the chilling cultural memories is of the period from September 1793 to July 1794, which was known as La Terreur.

    At the time the French state literally coined the term “terrorisme” — with the blade of the guillotine dropping on neck after neck as the state tried to consolidate power through terror. But, as Robie points out, quoting law professor Roger S. Clark, we tend to use the term today to refer almost exclusively to non-state actors.

    With the US and Israel gunning down starving civilians in Gaza every day, with wave after wave of terror attacks being committed inside Iran and across the Middle East by Mossad, the CIA and MI6, we should amend this erroneous habit.

    The DGSE team who attached limpet mines to the Rainbow Warrior did so as psychopathic servants of the French State. Eyes of Fire: “At the time, Prime Minister David Lange described the Rainbow Warrior attack as ‘nothing more than a sordid act of international state-backed terrorism’.”

    Don’t get me wrong. I am not “anti-French”. I lived for years in France, had a French girlfriend, studied French history, language and literature. I even had friends in Wellington who worked at the French Embassy.

    Curiously when I lived next to Premier House, the official residence of the prime minister, my other next door neighbour was a French agent who specialised in surveillance. Our houses backed onto Premier House. Quelle coïncidence. To his mild consternation I’d greet him with “Salut, mon espion favori.” (Hello, my favourite spy).

    What I despise is French colonialism, French racism, and what the French call magouillage. I don’t know a good English word for it . . .  it is a mix of shenanigans, duplicity, artful deception to achieve unscrupulous outcomes that can’t be publicly avowed. In brief: what the French attempted in Auckland in 1985.

    Robie recounts in detail the lying, smokescreens and roadblocks that everyone from President Mitterrand through to junior officials put in the way of the New Zealand investigators. Mitterrand gave Prime Minister David Lange assurances that the culprits would be brought to justice. The French Embassy in Wellington claimed at the time: “In no way is France involved. The French government doesn’t deal with its opponents in such ways.”

    It took years for the bombshell to explode that none other than Mitterrand himself had ordered the terrorist attack on New Zealand and Greenpeace!

    Rainbow Warrior III . . . the current successor to the bombed ship. Photographed at Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands in April 2025. Image: © Bianca Vitale/Greenpeace

    We the people of the Pacific
     We, the people of the Pacific, owe a debt to Greenpeace and all those who were part of the Rainbow Warrior, including author David Robie. We must remember the crime and call it by its name: state terrorism.

    The French attempted to escape justice, deny involvement and then welched on the terms of the agreement negotiated with the help of the United Nations secretary-general.

    A great way to honour the sacrifice of those who stood up for justice, who stood for peace and a nuclear-free Pacific, and who honoured our own national identity would be to buy David Robie’s excellent book.

    I’ll give the last word to former Prime Minister Helen Clark:

    “This is the time for New Zealand to link with the many small and middle powers across regions who have a vision for a world characterised by solidarity and peace and which can rise to the occasion to combat the existential challenges it faces — including of nuclear weapons, climate change, and artificial intelligence. If our independent foreign policy is to mean anything in the mid-2020s, it must be based on concerted diplomacy for peace and sustainable development.”

    You cannot sink a rainbow.

    Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He contributes to Asia Pacific Report and Café Pacific, and hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Legends of a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific – Rev Mua Strickson-Pua

    Pacific Media Watch

    When advocates and defenders of a nuclear-free Pacific condemned the AUKUS military pact two years ago and warned New Zealand that the agreement would make the world “more dangerous”,  a key speaker was Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua.

    He was among leading participants at a Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) movement teachers’ wānanga, which launched a petition against the pact with one of the “elders” among the activists, Hilda Halkyard-Harawira (Te Moana Nui a Kiwa), symbolically adding the first signature.

    Speaking about the petition declaration in a ceremony on the steps of the Auckland Museum marking the 10 July 1985 bombing of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior, Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua explained that the AUKUS agreement was a military pact between Australia-UK-US that was centred on Canberra’s acquisition of nuclear propelled submarines.

    Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua and the NFIP petition has been featured in a new video report by Nik Naidu as part of a “Legends of NFIP” series by Talanoa TV of the Whanau Community Centre and Hub.

    • This and other videos will be screened at the “Legends of the Pacific: Stories of a Nuclear-Free Moana 1975-1995” exhibition this month at Ellen Melville Centre, which will be opened on Saturday, July 12 at 3pm, and open daily July 13-18, 9.30am to 4.30pm.
    • The exhibition is organised by the Asia Pacific Media Network (APMN), Whānau Community Centre and Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Fiji human rights coalition challenges Rabuka over decolonisation ‘unfinished business’

    Asia Pacific Report

    The NGO Coalition on Human Rights in Fiji (NGOCHR) has called on Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka as the new chair of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) to “uphold justice, stability and security” for Kanaky New Caledonia and West Papua.

    In a statement today after last week’s MSG leaders’ summit in Suva, the coalition also warned over Indonesia’s “chequebook diplomacy” as an obstacle for the self-determination aspirations of Melanesian peoples not yet independent.

    Indonesia is a controversial associate member of the MSG in what is widely seen in the region as a “complication” for the regional Melanesian body.

    The statement said that with Rabuka’s “extensive experience as a seasoned statesman in the Pacific, we hope that this second chapter will chart a different course, one rooted in genuine commitment to uphold justice, stability and security for all our Melanesian brothers and sisters in Kanaky New Caledonia and West Papua”.

    The coalition said the summit’s theme, “A peaceful and prosperous Melanesia”, served as a reminder that even after several decades of regional bilaterals, “our Melanesian leaders have made little to no progress in fulfilling its purpose in the region — to support the independence and sovereignty of all Melanesians”.

    “Fiji, as incoming chair, inherits the unfinished work of the MSG. As rightly stated by the late great Father Walter Lini, ‘We will not be free until all of Melanesia is free”, the statement said.

    “The challenges for Fiji’s chair to meet the goals of the MSG are complex and made more complicated by the inclusion of Indonesia as an associate member in 2015.

    ‘Indonesia active repression’
    “Indonesia plays an active role in the ongoing repression of West Papuans in their desire for independence. Their associate member status provides a particular obstacle for Fiji as chair in furthering the self-determination goals of the MSG.”

    Complicating matters further was the asymmetry in the relationship between Indonesia and the rest of the MSG members, the statement said.

    “As a donor government and emerging economic power, Indonesia’s ‘chequebook and cultural diplomacy’ continues to wield significant influence across the region.

    “Its status as an associate member of the MSG raises serious concerns about whether it is appropriate, as this pathway risks further marginalising the voices of our West Papuan sisters and brothers.”

    This defeated the “whole purpose of the MSG: ‘Excelling together towards a progressive and prosperous Melanesia’.”

    The coalition acknowledged Rabuka’s longstanding commitment to the people of Kanaky New Caledonia. A relationship and shared journey that had been forged since 1989.

    ‘Stark reminder’
    The pro-independence riots of May 2024 served as a “stark reminder that much work remains to be done to realise the full aspirations of the Kanak people”.

    As the Pacific awaited a “hopeful and favourable outcome” from the Troika Plus mission to Kanaky New Caledonia, the coalition said that it trusted Rabuka to “carry forward the voices, struggles, dreams and enduring aspirations of the people of Kanaky New Caledonia”.

    The statement called on Rabuka as the new chair of MSG to:

    • Ensure the core founding values, and mission of the MSG are upheld;
    • Re-evaluate Indonesia’s appropriateness as an associate member of the MSG; and
    • Elevate discussions on West Papua and Kanaky New Caledonia at the MSG level and through discussions at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders.

    The Fiji NGO Coalition on Human Rights (NGOCHR) represents the Fiji Women’s Crisis Centre (chair), Fiji Women’s Rights Movement, Citizens’ Constitutional Forum, femLINKpacific, Social Empowerment and Education Program, and Diverse Voices and Action (DIVA) for Equality Fiji. Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) is an observer.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Fiji’s Dr Prasad unveils $4.8b budget as deficit widens

    By Kaya Selby, RNZ Pacific journalist

    The Fiji government is spending big on this year’s budget.

    The country’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Biman Prasad, unveiled a FJ$4.8 billion (about NZ$3.5 billion) spending package, complete with cost of living measures and fiscal stimulus, to the Fijian Parliament on Friday.

    This is about F$280 million more than last year, with the deficit widening to around $886 million.

    Dr Prasad told Parliament that his government had guided the country to a better economic position than where he found it.

    “When we came into office we were in a precarious economic crossroad . . . our first priority was to restore macroeconomic stability, rebuild trust in policymaking institutions, and chart a path towards sustainable and inclusive growth.”

    The 2025/2026 budget consisted of a spending increase across almost every area, with education, the largest area of spending, up $69 million to $847 million overall.

    The health sector received $611.6 million, the Fijian Roads Authority $388 million, and the Police force $240.3 million, all increases.

    A package of cost of living measures costing the government $800 million has also been announced. This includes a value-added tax (VAT) cut from 15 percent to 12.5 percent on goods and services.

    Various import duties, which firms pay for goods from overseas, have been cut, such as  chicken pieces and parts (from 42 to 15 percent) and frozen fish (from 15 to 0 percent).

    A subsidy to reduce bus fares by 10 percent was announced, alongside a 3 percent increase in salaries for civil servants, both beginning in August.

    Drastic international conditions
     In a news conference, Dr Prasad said that responding to difficult global economic shocks was the primary rationale behind the budget.

    “This is probably one of the most uncertain global economic environments that we have gone through. There has been no resolution on the tariffs by the United States and the number of countries, big or small,” he said.

    “We have never had this kind of interest in Fiji from overseas investors or diaspora, and we are doing a lot more work to get our diaspora to come back.”

    When asked why the VAT was cut, reducing government revenue and widening the deficit, Dr Prasad said there was a need to encourage consumer spending.

    “If the Middle East crisis deepens and oil prices go up, the first thing that will be affected will be the supply chain . . . prices could go up, people could be affected more.”

    On building resilience from global shocks, Dr Prasad said the budget would reduce Fiji’s reliance on tourism, remittances, and international supply chains, by building domestic industry.

    “It kills two birds in one [stone]. It addresses any big shock we might get . . .  plus it also helps the people who would be affected.”

    In their Pacific Economic Update, the World Bank projected economic growth of 2.6 percent in 2025, after a slump from 7.5 percent in 2023 to 3.8 percent in 2024.

    Senior World Bank economist Ekaterine Vashakmadze told RNZ that Fiji was an interesting case.

    “Fiji is one of the countries that suffered the sharpest shock [post-covid] . . .  because tourism stopped.”

    “On the other hand, Fiji was one of the first countries in the Pacific to recover fully in terms of the output to pre-pandemic level.”

    Deficit too high — opposition
     Opposition members have hit out at the government over the scale of the spend, and whether it would translate into outcomes.

    Opposition MP Alvick Maharaj, in a statement to local media outlet Duavata News, referred to the larger deficit as “deeply troubling”.

    “The current trajectory is concerning, and the government must change its fiscal strategy to one that is truly sustainable.”

    “The way the budget is being presented, it’s like the government is trying to show that in one year Fiji will become a developed country.”

    MP Ketal Lal on social media called the budget “a desperate cloak for scandal” designed to appeal to voters ahead of elections in 2026.

    “This is what happens when a government governs by pressure instead of principle. The people have been crying out for years. The Opposition has consistently raised concerns about the crushing cost of living but they only act when it becomes politically necessary. And even then, it’s never enough.”

    He also pointed out, regarding the 3 percent increase in civil servants salaries, that someone earning $30,000 a year would only see a pay increase of $900 per year.

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Fiji’s Dr Prasad unveils $4.8b budget as deficit widens

    By Kaya Selby, RNZ Pacific journalist

    The Fiji government is spending big on this year’s budget.

    The country’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance, Biman Prasad, unveiled a FJ$4.8 billion (about NZ$3.5 billion) spending package, complete with cost of living measures and fiscal stimulus, to the Fijian Parliament on Friday.

    This is about F$280 million more than last year, with the deficit widening to around $886 million.

    Dr Prasad told Parliament that his government had guided the country to a better economic position than where he found it.

    “When we came into office we were in a precarious economic crossroad . . . our first priority was to restore macroeconomic stability, rebuild trust in policymaking institutions, and chart a path towards sustainable and inclusive growth.”

    The 2025/2026 budget consisted of a spending increase across almost every area, with education, the largest area of spending, up $69 million to $847 million overall.

    The health sector received $611.6 million, the Fijian Roads Authority $388 million, and the Police force $240.3 million, all increases.

    A package of cost of living measures costing the government $800 million has also been announced. This includes a value-added tax (VAT) cut from 15 percent to 12.5 percent on goods and services.

    Various import duties, which firms pay for goods from overseas, have been cut, such as  chicken pieces and parts (from 42 to 15 percent) and frozen fish (from 15 to 0 percent).

    A subsidy to reduce bus fares by 10 percent was announced, alongside a 3 percent increase in salaries for civil servants, both beginning in August.

    Drastic international conditions
     In a news conference, Dr Prasad said that responding to difficult global economic shocks was the primary rationale behind the budget.

    “This is probably one of the most uncertain global economic environments that we have gone through. There has been no resolution on the tariffs by the United States and the number of countries, big or small,” he said.

    “We have never had this kind of interest in Fiji from overseas investors or diaspora, and we are doing a lot more work to get our diaspora to come back.”

    When asked why the VAT was cut, reducing government revenue and widening the deficit, Dr Prasad said there was a need to encourage consumer spending.

    “If the Middle East crisis deepens and oil prices go up, the first thing that will be affected will be the supply chain . . . prices could go up, people could be affected more.”

    On building resilience from global shocks, Dr Prasad said the budget would reduce Fiji’s reliance on tourism, remittances, and international supply chains, by building domestic industry.

    “It kills two birds in one [stone]. It addresses any big shock we might get . . .  plus it also helps the people who would be affected.”

    In their Pacific Economic Update, the World Bank projected economic growth of 2.6 percent in 2025, after a slump from 7.5 percent in 2023 to 3.8 percent in 2024.

    Senior World Bank economist Ekaterine Vashakmadze told RNZ that Fiji was an interesting case.

    “Fiji is one of the countries that suffered the sharpest shock [post-covid] . . .  because tourism stopped.”

    “On the other hand, Fiji was one of the first countries in the Pacific to recover fully in terms of the output to pre-pandemic level.”

    Deficit too high — opposition
     Opposition members have hit out at the government over the scale of the spend, and whether it would translate into outcomes.

    Opposition MP Alvick Maharaj, in a statement to local media outlet Duavata News, referred to the larger deficit as “deeply troubling”.

    “The current trajectory is concerning, and the government must change its fiscal strategy to one that is truly sustainable.”

    “The way the budget is being presented, it’s like the government is trying to show that in one year Fiji will become a developed country.”

    MP Ketal Lal on social media called the budget “a desperate cloak for scandal” designed to appeal to voters ahead of elections in 2026.

    “This is what happens when a government governs by pressure instead of principle. The people have been crying out for years. The Opposition has consistently raised concerns about the crushing cost of living but they only act when it becomes politically necessary. And even then, it’s never enough.”

    He also pointed out, regarding the 3 percent increase in civil servants salaries, that someone earning $30,000 a year would only see a pay increase of $900 per year.

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: ‘Don’t surrender’ to Indonesian pressure over West Papua, Bomanak warns MSG

    Asia Pacific Report

    A West Papuan independence movement leader has warned the Melanesian Spearhead Group after its 23rd leaders summit in Suva, Fiji, to not give in to a “neocolonial trade in betrayal and abandonment” over West Papua.

    While endorsing and acknowledging the “unconditional support” of Melanesian people to the West Papuan cause for decolonisation, OPM chair and commander Jeffrey P Bomanak
    spoke against “surrendering” to Indonesia which was carrying out a policy of “bank cheque diplomacy” in a bid to destroy solidarity.

    Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka took over the chairmanship of the MSG this week from his Vanuatu counterpart Jotham Napat and vowed to build on the hard work and success that had been laid before it.

    He said he would not take the responsibility of chairmanship lightly, especially as they were confronted with an increasingly fragmented global landscape that demanded more from them.

    PNG Prime Minister James Marape called on MSG member states to put West Papua and Kanaky New Caledonia back on the agenda for full MSG membership.

    Marape said that while high-level dialogue with Indonesia over West Papua and France about New Caledonia must continue, it was culturally “un-Melanesian” not to give them a seat at the table.

    West Papua currently holds observer status in the MSG, which includes Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji — and Indonesia as an associate member.

    PNG ‘subtle shift’
    PNG recognises the West Papuan region as five provinces of Indonesia, making Marape’s remarks in Suva a “subtle shift that may unsettle Jakarta”, reports Gorethy Kenneth in the PNG Post-Courier.

    West Papuans have waged a long-standing Melanesian struggle for independence from Indonesia since 1969.

    The MSG resolved to send separate letters of concern to the French and Indonesian presidents.

    The OPM letter warning the MSG. Image: Screenshot APR

    In a statement, Bomanak thanked the Melanesians of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS) of Kanaky New Caledonia for “unconditionally support[ing] your West Papuan brothers and sisters, subjected to dispossession, enslavement, genocide, ethnocide, infanticide, and ethnic cleansing, [as] the noblest of acts.”

    “We will never forget these Melanesian brothers and sisters who remain faithfully loyal to our cultural identity no matter how many decades is our war of liberation and no matter how many bags of gold and silver Indonesia offers for the betrayal of ancestral kinship.

    “When the late [Vanuatu Prime Minister] Father Walter Lini declared, ‘Melanesia is not free unless West Papua is free,”’ he was setting the benchmark for leadership and loyalty across the entire group of Melanesian nations.

    “Father Lini was not talking about a timeframe of five months, or five years, or five decades.

    “Father Lini was talking about an illegal invasion and military occupation of West Papua by a barbaric nation wanting West Papua’s gold and forests and willing to exterminate all of us for this wealth.

    ‘Noble declaration’
    “That this noble declaration of kinship and loyalty now has a commercial value that can be bought and sold like a commodity by those without Father Lini’s courage and leadership, and betrayed for cheap materialism, is an act of historic infamy that will be recorded by Melanesian historians and taught in all our nations’ universities long after West Papua is liberated.”

    OPM leader Jeffrey Bomanak . . . his letter warns against surrendering to Indonesian control. Image: OPM

    Bomanak was condemning the decision of the MSG to regard the “West Papua problem” as an internal issue for Indonesia.

    “The illegal occupation of West Papua and the genocide of West Papuans is not an internal issue to be solved by the barbaric occupier.

    “Indonesia’s position as an associate member of MSG is a form of colonial corruption of the Melanesian people.

    “We will continue to fight without MSG because the struggle for independence and sovereignty is our fundamental right of the Papuan people’s granted by God.

    “Every member of MSG can recommend to the United Nations that West Papua deserves the same right of liberation and nation-state sovereignty that was achieved without compromise by Timor-Leste — the other nation illegally invaded by Indonesia and also subjected to genocide.”

    Bomanak said the MSG’s remarks stood in stark contrast to Father Lini’s solidarity with West Papua and were “tantamount to sharing in the destruction of West Papua”.

    ‘Blood money’
    It was also collaborating in the “extermination of West Papuans for economic benefit, for Batik Largesse. Blood money!”

    The Papua ‘problem’ was not a human rights problem but a problem of the Papuan people’s political right for independence and sovereignty based on international law and the right to self-determination.

    It was an international problem that had not been resolved.

    “In fact, to say it is simply a ‘problem’ ignores the fate of the genocide of 500,000 victims.”

    Bomanak said MSG leaders should make clear recommendations to the Indonesian government to resolve the “Papua problem” at the international level based on UN procedures and involving the demilitarisation of West Papua with all Indonesian defence and security forces “leaving the land they invaded and unlawfully occupied.”

    Indonesia’s position as an associate member in the MSG was a systematic new colonialisation by Indonesia in the home of the Melanesian people.

    Indonesia well understood the weaknesses of each Melanesian leader and “carries out bank cheque diplomacy accordingly to destroy the solidarity so profoundly declared by the late Father Walter Lini.”

    “No surrender!”

    MSG leaders in Suva . . . Jeremy Manele (Solomon Islands, from left), James Marape (PNG), Sitiveni Rabuka (Fiji), Jotham Napat (Vanuatu), and Roch Wamytan (FLNKS spokesperson). Image: PNG Post-Courier

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Melanesian Spearhead Group leaders discuss Middle East conflict before ceasefire

    RNZ Pacific

    Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape says the Middle East conflict was one of the discussions of the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) in Suva this week — and Pacific leaders “took note of what is happening”.

    The Post-Courier reports Marape saying the “12 Day War” between Israel and Iran was based on high technology and using missiles sent from great distances.

    “In the context of MSG, the leaders want peace always. And the Pacific remains friends to all, enemies to none,” he said.

    He said an effect on PNG would be the inflation in prices of oil and gas.

    Yesterday morning, US President Donald Trump declared a ceasefire had been agreed  between Israel and Iran, and so far it has been holding in spite of tensions.

    Australia had stepped in to help Papua New Guinea diplomats and citizens caught in the Middle East.

    Foreign Affairs Minister Justin Tkatchenko confirmed last week that a group was to be evacuated through Jordan.

    There had been six diplomats in lockdown at the PNG embassy in Jerusalem awaiting extraction.

    Meanwhile, a repatriation flight for Australians stuck in Israel had been cancelled.

    ABC News reported that it was the second day repatriation plans were scrapped at the last minute because of rocket fire. A bus meant to take people across the border into Jordan was cancelled the previous day.

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Fiji advocacy group slams Indonesian role in MSG as a ‘disgrace’

    Asia Pacific Report

    A Fiji-based advocacy group has condemned the participation of Indonesia in the Melanesian Spearhead Group which is meeting in Suva this week, saying it is a “profound disgrace” that the Indonesian Embassy continues to “operate freely” within the the MSG Secretariat.

    “This presence blatantly undermines the core principles of justice and solidarity we claim to uphold as Melanesians,” said We Bleed Black and Red in a social media post.

    The group said that as the new MSG chair, the Fiji government could not speak cannot credibly about equity, peace, regional unity, or the Melanesian family “while the very agent of prolonged Melanesian oppression sits at the decision-making table”.

    The statement said that for more than six decades, the people of West Papua had endured “systemic atrocities from mass killings to environmental devastation — acts that clearly constitute ecocide and gross human rights violations”.

    “Indonesia’s track record is not only morally indefensible but also a flagrant breach of numerous international agreements and conventions,” the group said.

    “It is time for all Melanesian nations to confront the reality behind the diplomatic facades and development aid.

    “No amount of financial incentives or diplomatic charm can erase the undeniable suffering of the West Papuan people.

    “We must rise above political appeasement and fulfill our moral and regional duty as one Melanesian family.

    “The Pacific cannot claim moral leadership while turning a blind eye and deaf ear to colonial violence on our own shores. Justice delayed is justice denied.”

    ‘Peaceful, prosperous Melanesia’
     Meanwhile, The Fiji Times reports that the 23rd MSG Leaders’ Summit got underway on Monday in Suva, drawing heads of state from Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and representatives from New Caledonia’s FLNKS.

    Hosted under the theme “A Peaceful and Prosperous Melanesia,” the summit ended yesterday.

    This year’s meeting also marked Fiji’s first time chairing the regional bloc since 1997.

    Fiji officially assumed the MSG chairmanship from Vanuatu following a traditional handover ceremony attended by senior officials, observers, and dignitaries at Draiba.

    Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister James Marape arrived in Suva on Sunday and reaffirmed Papua New Guinea’s commitment to MSG cooperation during today’s plenary session.

    He will also take part in high-level talanoa discussions with the Pacific Islands Forum’s Eminent Persons Group, aimed at deepening institutional reform and regional solidarity.

    Observers from the United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) and Indonesia were also present, reflecting ongoing efforts to expand the bloc’s influence on issues like self-determination, regional trade, security, and climate resilience in the Pacific.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Vehicle issued to Fiji assistant minister involved in fatal accident – driver’s son implicated

    By Anish Chand in Suva

    The son of a Fiji assistant minister is under investigation for allegedly driving a government vehicle without authority and causing an accident that killed two men.

    The accident took place along Bau Road, Nausori, last night.

    The vehicle involved in the accident was the official government vehicle issued for the assistant minister.

    It is alleged the 17-year-old took the vehicle without the knowledge of his father.

    Police have confirmed the incident.

    “The suspect is alleged to have taken the keys of the vehicle from his father while he slept and was driving along Bau Road, when he bumped the two victims standing on the roadside, and he fled the scene,” said the Fiji Police Force.

    “He later relayed the matter to his father who reported the matter to police.

    “The two victims in their 40s were conveyed to the Nausori Health Centre where their deaths were confirmed by medical officials.”

    Republished from The Fiji Times with permission.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Fijian in Abu Dhabi worried about Pacific communities in Middle East

    By Susana Suisuiki, Presenter/producer of RNZ Pacific Waves

    Fiji’s Embassy in Abu Dhabi says it is closely monitoring the situation in Iran and Israel as tensions remain high.

    Israel carried out a dozen strikes against Iranian military and nuclear sites on Friday, claiming it acted out of “self-defence”, saying Iran is close to building a nuclear weapon.

    Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Israel that “severe punishment” would follow and two waves of missiles were fired at Israel.

    Fiji’s Embassy in Abu Dhabi is urging the Fijian community there to remain calm, stay informed, and reach out to the Embassy should they have any concerns or require assistance during this period of heightened regional tensions.

    A Fiji national in Abu Dhabi said he had yet to hear how other Pacific communities in the Middle East were coping amid the Israel-Iran conflict.

    Speaking to RNZ Pacific Waves from Abu Dhabi, Fiji media specialist Kelepi Abariga said the situation was “freaky and risky”.

    Abariga has lived in Abu Dhabi for more than a decade and while he was far from the danger zones, he was concerned for his “fellow Pacific people”.

    ‘I hope they are safe’
    “I just hope they are safe as of now, this is probably the first time Israel has attacked Iran directly,” he said.

    “Everybody thinks that Iran has a huge nuclear deposit with them, that they could use it against any country in the world.

    “But you know, that is yet to be seen.

    “So right now, you know we from the Pacific, we’re right in the middle of everything and I think you know, our safety is paramount.”

    Abariga was not aware of any Pacific people in Tehran but said if they were, they were most likely to be working for an NGO or the United Nations.

    However, Abariga said there were Fiji nationals working at the International Christian embassy in Jerusalem and Solomon Island students in the south of Israel.

    He also said that Fijian troops were stationed at Golan Heights occupied by Israel.

    While Abariga described Abu Dhabi as the safest country in the Middle East, he said the politics in the region were volatile.

    “It’s been intense like that for all this time, and I think when you mention Iran in this country [UAE], they have all the differences so it’s probably something that has started a long way before.”

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Fiji coup culture and political meddling in media education given airing

    Pacific Media Watch

    Taieri MP Ingrid Leary reflected on her years in Fiji as a television journalist and media educator at a Fiji Centre function in Auckland celebrating Fourth Estate values and independence at the weekend.

    It was a reunion with former journalism professor David Robie — they had worked together as a team at the University of the South Pacific amid media and political controversy leading up to the George Speight coup in May 2000.

    Leary, a former British Council executive director and lawyer, was the guest speaker at a gathering of human rights activists, development advocates, academics and journalists hosted at the Whānau Community Centre and Hub, the umbrella base for the Fiji Centre, Auckland Rotuman Fellowship, Asia Pacific Media Network and other groups.

    She said she was delighted to meet “special people in David’s life” and to be speaking to a diverse group sharing “similar values of courage, freedom of expression, truth and tino rangatiratanga”.

    “I want to start this talanoa on Friday, 19 May 2000 — 13 years almost to the day of the first recognised military coup in Fiji in 1987 — when failed businessman George Speight tore off his balaclava to reveal his identity.

    She pointed out that there had actually been another “coup” 100 years earlier by Ratu Cakobau.

    “Speight had seized Parliament holding the elected government at gunpoint, including the politician mother, Lavinia Padarath, of one of my best friends — Anna Padarath.

    Hostage-taking report
    “Within minutes, the news of the hostage-taking was flashed on Radio Fiji’s 10 am bulletin by a student journalist on secondment there — Tamani Nair. He was a student of David Robie’s.”

    Nair had been dispatched to Parliament to find out what was happening and reported from a cassava patch.

    “Fiji TV was trashed . . . and transmission pulled for 48 hours.

    “The university shut down — including the student radio facilities, and journalism programme website — to avoid a similar fate, but the journalism school was able to keep broadcasting and publishing via a parallel website set up at the University of Technology Sydney.

    “The pictures were harrowing, showing street protests turning violent and the barbaric behaviour of Speight’s henchmen towards dissenters.

    “Thus began three months of heroic journalism by David’s student team — including through a period of martial law that began 10 days later and saw some of the most restrictive levels of censorship ever experienced in the South Pacific.”

    Leary paid tribute to some of the “brave satire” produced by senior Fiji Times reporters filling the newspaper with “non-news” (such as about haircuts, drinking kava) as an act of defiance.

    “My friend Anna Padarath returned from doing her masters in law in Australia on a scholarship to be closer to her Mum, whose hostage days within Parliament Grounds stretched into weeks and then months.

    Whanau Community Centre and Hub co-founder Nik Naidu speaking at the Asia Pacific Media Network event at the weekend. Image: Khairiah A. Rahman/APMN

    Invisible consequences
    “Anna would never return to her studies — one of the many invisible consequences of this profoundly destructive era in Fiji’s complex history.

    “Happily, she did go on to carve an incredible career as a women’s rights advocate.”

    “Meanwhile David’s so-called ‘barefoot student journalists’ — who snuck into Parliament the back way by bushtrack — were having their stories read and broadcast globally.

    “And those too shaken to even put their hands to keyboards on Day 1 emerged as journalism leaders who would go on to win prizes for their coverage.”

    Speight was sentenced to life in prison, but was pardoned in 2024.

    Taieri MP Ingrid Leary speaking at the Whānau Community Centre and Hub. Image: Nik Naidu/APMN

    Leary said that was just one chapter in the remarkable career of David Robie who had been an editor, news director, foreign news editor and freelance writer with a number of different agencies and news organisations — including Agence France-Presse, Rand Daily Mail, The Auckland Star, Insight Magazine, and New Outlook Magazine — “a family member to some, friend to many, mentor to most”.

    Reflecting on working with Dr Robie at USP, which she joined as television lecturer from Fiji Television, she said:

    “At the time, being a younger person, I thought he was a little bit crazy, because he was communicating with people all around the world when digital media was in its infancy in Fiji, always on email, always getting up on online platforms, and I didn’t appreciate the power of online media at the time.

    “And it was incredible to watch.”

    Ahead of his time
    She said he was an innovator and ahead of his time.

    Dr Robie viewed journalism as a tool for empowerment, aiming to provide communities with the information they needed to make informed decisions.

    “We all know that David has been a champion of social justice and for decolonisation, and for the values of an independent Fourth Estate.”

    She said she appreciated the freedom to develop independent media as an educator, adding that one of her highlights was producing the groundbreaking 1999 documentary Maire about Maire Bopp Du Pont, who was a Tahitian student journalist at USP and advocate for the Pacific community living with HIV/AIDs.

    She became a nuclear-free Pacific campaigner in Pape’ete and was also founding chief executive of  the Pacific Islands AIDS Foundation (PIAF).

    Leary presented Dr Robie with a “speaking stick” carved from an apricot tree branch by the husband of a Labour stalwart based in Cromwell — the event doubled as his 80th birthday.

    In response, Dr Robie said the occasion was a “golden opportunity” to thank many people who had encouraged and supported him over many years.

    Massive upheaval
    “We must have done something right,” he said about USP, “because in 2000, the year of George Speight’s coup, our students covered the massive upheaval which made headlines around the world when Mahendra Chaudhry’s Labour-led coalition government was held at gunpoint for 56 days.

    “The students courageously covered the coup with their website Pacific Journalism Online and their newspaper Wansolwara — “One Ocean”.  They won six Ossie Awards – unprecedented for a single university — in Australia that year and a standing ovation.”

    He said there was a video on YouTube of their exploits called Frontline Reporters and one of the students, Christine Gounder, wrote an article for a Commonwealth Press Union magazine entitled, “From trainees to professionals. And all it took was a coup”.

    Dr Robie said this Fiji experience was still one of the most standout experiences he had had as a journalist and educator.

    Along with similar coverage of the 1997 Sandline mercenary crisis by his students at the University of Papua New Guinea.

    He made some comments about the 1985 Rainbow Warrior voyage to Rongelap in the Marshall islands and the subsequent bombing by French secret agents in Auckland.

    But he added “you can read all about this adventure in my new book” being published in a few weeks.

    Taieri MP Ingrid Leary (right) with Dr David Robie and his wife Del Abcede at the Fiji Centre function. Image: Camille Nakhid

    Biggest 21st century crisis
    Dr Robie said the profession of journalism, truth telling and holding power to account, was vitally important to a healthy democracy.

    Although media did not succeed in telling people what to think, it did play a vital role in what to think about. However, the media world was undergoing massive change and fragmentation.

    “And public trust is declining in the face of fake news and disinformation,” he said

    “I think we are at a crossroads in society, both locally and globally. Both journalism and democracy are under an unprecedented threat in my lifetime.

    “When more than 230 journalists can be killed in 19 months in Gaza and there is barely a bleep from the global community, there is something savagely wrong.

    “The Gazan journalists won the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize collectively last year with the judges saying, “As humanity, we have a huge debt to their courage and commitment to freedom of expression.”

    “The carnage and genocide in Gaza is deeply disturbing, especially the failure of the world to act decisively to stop it. The fact that Israel can kill with impunity at least 54,000 people, mostly women and children, destroy hospitals and starve people to death and crush a people’s right to live is deeply shocking.

    “This is the biggest crisis of the 21st century. We see this relentless slaughter go on livestreamed day after day and yet our media and politicians behave as if this is just ‘normal’. It is shameful, horrendous. Have we lost our humanity?

    “Gaza has been our test. And we have failed.”

    Dr Robie praised the support of his wife, social justice activist Del Abcede, and family members.

    Other speakers included Whānau Hub co-founder Nik Naidu, one of the anti-coup Coalition for Democracy in Fiji (CDF) stalwarts; the Heritage New Zealand’s Antony Phillips; and Multimedia Investments and Evening Report director Selwyn Manning.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: ‘HIV shouldn’t be death sentence in Fiji’ – call for testing amid outbreak

    By Christina Persico, RNZ Pacific bulletin editor

    Fiji’s Minister for Health and Medical Services has revealed the latest HIV numbers in the country to a development partner roundtable discussing the national response.

    The minister reported 490 new HIV cases between October and December last year, bringing the 2024 total to 1583.

    “Included in this number are 32 newborns diagnosed with HIV acquired through mother-to-child transmission,” Dr Atonio Rabici Lalabalavu said.

    Fiji declared an outbreak of the disease in January. The Fiji Sun reported around 115 HIV-related deaths in the January-September 2024 period.

    Fiji’s Central Division reported 1100 new cases in 2024, with 427 in the Western Division and 50 in the Northern Division.

    Of the newly recorded cases, less than half — 770 — have been successfully linked to care, of which 711 have been commenced on antiretroviral therapy (ART).

    Just over half were aged in their twenties, and 70 percent of cases were male.

    Increase in TB, HIV co-infection
    Dr Lalabalavu said the increase in HIV cases was also seeing an increase in tuberculosis and HIV co-infection, with 160 individuals in a year.

    He said the ministry strongly encouraged individuals to get tested, know their status, and if it was positive, seek treatment.

    Fiji Minister for Health and Medical Services Dr Atonio Lalabalavu . . .  strongly encourages individuals to get tested. Image: Ministry of Health & Medical Services/FB/RNZ Pacific

    And if it is negative, to maintain that negative status.

    “I will reiterate what I have said before to all Fijians – HIV should not be a death sentence in Fiji,” he said.

    In the Western Pacific, the estimated number of people living with HIV (PLHIV) reached 1.9 million in 2020, up from 1.4 million in 2010.

    At the time, the World Health Organisation said that over the previous two decades, HIV prevalence in the Western Pacific had remained low at 0.1 percent.

    However, the low prevalence in the general population masked high levels of HIV infection among key populations.

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Ship runs aground in Fiji – then its rescue vessel capsizes

    RNZ Pacific

    Fiji’s Maritime Safety Authority has launched an investigation into Goundar Shipping Limited following two incidents involving its vessels.

    Late last month, one vessel ran aground on the reef of Ono-i-Lau, and villagers had to step in to ferry stranded passengers to nearby islands using small boats.

    On Monday, the Lomaiviti Princess II was sent to assist with salvage operations of the grounded boat in Ono-i-Lau.

    But the rescue boat never made it as it capsized in Suva Harbour, where it remains on its side.

    The company’s managing director George Goundar told local media “the mishap at Suva Harbour regarding the Lomaiviti Princess II was not the works of the company”.

    He directed all questions to the Fiji Ports Cooperation.

    Maritime Safety declines comment
    FBC News has asked the ports cooperation for comment, but the outlet reported the Maritime Safety Authority had refused to comment further.

    Minister Ro Filipe Tuisawau said the matter was under investigation and a release would be issued after he received an update on the matter.

    On May 29, the company posted on social media about the first incident, saying “GSL Management would like to sincerely thank the people of Ono-i-Lau for your tremendous support following the mishap”.

    “We acknowledge and appreciate your assistance in ensuring the passengers were safely brought ashore.

    “The vessel is now en route to Suva.”

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Fiji coup culture and political meddling in media education gets airing

    Pacific Media Watch

    Taieri MP Ingrid Leary reflected on her years in Fiji as a television journalist and media educator at a Fiji Centre function in Auckland celebrating Fourth Estate values and independence at the weekend.

    It was a reunion with former journalism professor David Robie — they had worked together as a team at the University of the South Pacific amid media and political controversy leading up to the George Speight coup in May 2000.

    Leary was the guest speaker at a gathering of human rights activists, development advocates, academics and journalists hosted at the Whānau Community Centre and Hub, the umbrella base for the Fiji Centre and Asia Pacific Media Network.

    She said she was delighted to meet “special people in David’s life” and to be speaking to a diverse group sharing “similar values of courage, freedom of expression, truth and tino rangatiratanga”.

    “I want to start this talanoa on Friday, 19 May 2000 — 13 years almost to the day of the first recognised military coup in Fiji in 1987 — when failed businessman George Speight tore off his balaclava to reveal his identity.

    She pointed out that there had actually been another “coup” 100 years earlier by Ratu Cakobau.

    “Speight had seized Parliament holding the elected government at gunpoint, including the politician mother, Lavinia Padarath, of one of my best friends — Anna Padarath.

    Hostage-taking report
    “Within minutes, the news of the hostage-taking was flashed on Radio Fiji’s 10 am bulletin by a student journalist on secondment there — Tamani Nair. He was a student of David Robie’s.”

    Nair had been dispatched to Parliament to find out what was happening and reported from a cassava patch.

    “Fiji TV was trashed . . . and transmission pulled for 48 hours.

    “The university shut down — including the student radio facilities, and journalism programme website — to avoid a similar fate, but the journalism school was able to keep broadcasting and publishing via a parallel website set up at the University of Technology Sydney.

    “The pictures were harrowing, showing street protests turning violent and the barbaric behaviour of Speight’s henchmen towards dissenters.

    “Thus began three months of heroic journalism by David’s student team — including through a period of martial law that began 10 days later and saw some of the most restrictive levels of censorship ever experienced in the South Pacific.”

    Leary paid tribute to some some of the “brave satire” produced by senior Fiji Times reporters filling paper with “non-news” (such as haircuts, drinking kava) as act of defiance.

    “My friend Anna Padarath returned from doing her masters in law in Australia on a scholarship to be closer to her Mum, whose hostage days within Parliament Grounds stretched into weeks and then months.

    Whanau Community Centre and Hub co-founder Nik Naidu speaking at the Asia Pacific Media Network event at the weekend. Image: Khairiah A. Rahman/APMN

    Invisible consequences
    “Anna would never return to her studies — one of the many invisible consequences of this profoundly destructive era in Fiji’s complex history.

    “Happily, she did go on to carve an incredible career as a women’s rights advocate.”

    “Meanwhile David’s so-called ‘barefoot student journalists’ — who snuck into Parliament the back way by bushtrack — were having their stories read and broadcast globally.

    “And those too shaken to even put their hands to keyboards on Day 1 emerged as journalism leaders who would go on to win prizes for their coverage.”

    Speight was sentenced to life in prison, but was pardoned in 2024.

    Taeri MP Ingrid Leary speaking at the Whānau Community Centre and Hub. Image: Nik Naidu/APMN

    Leary said that was just one chapter in the remarkable career of David Robie who had been an editor, news director, foreign news editor and freelance writer with a number of different agencies and news organisations — including Agence France-Presse, Rand Daily Mail, The Auckland Star, Insight Magazine, and New Outlook Magazine — “a family member to some, friend to many, mentor to most”.

    Reflecting on working with Dr Robie at USP, which she joined as television lecturer from Fiji Television, she said:

    “At the time, being a younger person, I thought he was a little but crazy, because he was communicating with people all around the world when digital media was in its infancy in Fiji, always on email, always getting up on online platforms, and I didn’t appreciate the power of online media at the time.

    “And it was incredible to watch.”

    Ahead of his time
    She said he was an innovator and ahead of his time.

    Dr Robie viewed journalism as a tool for empowerment, aiming to provide communities with the information they needed to make informed decisions.

    “We all know that David has been a champion of social justice and for decolonisation, and for the values of an independent Fourth Estate.”

    She said she appreciated the freedom to develop independent media as an educator, adding that one of her highlights was producing the groundbreaking documentary Maire about Maire Bopp Du Pont, who was a student journalist at USP and advocate for the Pacific community living with HIV/AIDs community.

    She later became a nuclear-free Pacific parliamentarian in Pape’ete.

    Leary presented Dr Robie with a “speaking stick” carved from an apricot tree branch by the husband of a Labour stalwart based in Cromwell — the event doubled as his 80th birthday.

    In response, Dr Robie said the occasion was a “golden opportunity” to thank many people who had encouraged and supported him over many years.

    Massive upheaval
    “We must have done something right,” he said about USP, “because in 2000, the year of George Speight’s coup, our students covered the massive upheaval which made headlines around the world when Mahendra Chaudhry’s Labour-led coalition government was held at gunpoint for 56 days.

    “The students courageously covered the coup with their website Pacific Journalism Online and their newspaper Wansolwara — “One Ocean”.  They won six Ossie Awards – unprecedented for a single university — in Australia that year and a standing ovation.”

    He said there was a video on YouTube of their exploits called Frontline Reporters and one of the students, Christine Gounder, wrote an article for a Commonwealth Press Union magazine entitled, “From trainees to professionals. And all it took was a coup”.

    Dr Robie said this Fiji experience was still one of the most standout experiences he had had as a journalist and educator.

    Along with similar coverage of the 1997 Sandline mercenary crisis by his students at the University of Papua New Guinea.

    He made some comments about the 1985 Rainbow Warrior voyage to Rongelap in the Marshall islands and the subsequent bombing by French secret agents in Auckland.

    But he added “you can read all about this adventure in my new book” being published in a few weeks.

    Taieri MP Ingrid Leary (right) with Dr David Robie and his wife Del Abcede at the Fiji Centre function. Image: Camille Nakhid

    Biggest 21st century crisis
    Dr Robie said the profession of journalism, truth telling and holding power to account, was vitally important to a healthy democracy.

    Although media did not succeed in telling people what to think, it did play a vital role in what to think about. However, the media world was undergoing massive change and fragmentation.

    “And public trust is declining in the face of fake news and disinformation,” he said

    “I think we are at a crossroads in society, both locally and globally. Both journalism and democracy are under an unprecedented threat in my lifetime.

    “When more than 230 journalists can be killed in 19 months in Gaza and there is barely a bleep from the global community, there is something savagely wrong.

    “The Gazan journalists won the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize collectively last year with the judges saying, “As humanity, we have a huge debt to their courage and commitment to freedom of expression.”

    “The carnage and genocide in Gaza is deeply disturbing, especially the failure of the world to act decisively to stop it. The fact that Israel can kill with impunity at least 54,000 people, mostly women and children, destroy hospitals and starve people to death and crush a people’s right to live is deeply shocking.

    “This is the biggest crisis of the 21st century. We see this relentless slaughter go on livestreamed day after day and yet our media and politicians behave as if this is just ‘normal’. It is shameful, horrendous. Have we lost our humanity?

    “Gaza has been our test. And we have failed.”

    Other speakers included Whānau Hub co-founder Nik Naidu, one of the anti-coup Coalition for Democracy in Fiji (CDF) stalwarts; the Heritage New Zealand’s Antony Phillips; and Multimedia Investments and Evening Report director Selwyn Manning.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Asia Pacific Report editor honoured for contribution to Pacific journalism

    Pacific Media Watch

    Asia Pacific Report editor David Robie was honoured with Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) at the weekend by the Governor-General, Dame Cindy Kiro, in an investiture ceremony at Government House Tāmaki Makaurau.

    He was one of eight recipients for various honours, which included Joycelyn Armstrong, who was presented with Companion of the King’s Service Order (KSO) for services to interfaith communities.

    Dr Robie’s award, which came in the King’s Birthday Honours in 2024 but was presented on Saturday, was for “services to journalism and Asia-Pacific media education”.

    His citation reads:

    Dr David Robie has contributed to journalism in New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region for more than 50 years.

    Dr Robie began his career with The Dominion in 1965 and worked as an international journalist and correspondent for agencies from Johannesburg to Paris. He has won several journalism awards, including the 1985 Media Peace Prize for his coverage of the Rainbow Warrior bombing.

    He was Head of Journalism at the University of Papua New Guinea from 1993 to 1997 and the University of the South Pacific in Suva from 1998 to 2002. He founded the Pacific Media Centre in 2007 while professor of journalism and communications at Auckland University of Technology.

    He developed four award-winning community publications as student training outlets. He pioneered special internships for Pacific students in partnership with media and the University of the South Pacific. He has organised scholarships with the Asia New Zealand Foundation for student journalists to China, Indonesia and the Philippines.

    He was founding editor of Pacific Journalism Review journal in 1994 and in 1996 he established the Pacific Media Watch, working as convenor with students to campaign for media freedom in the Pacific.

    He has authored 10 books on Asia-Pacific media and politics. Dr Robie co-founded and is deputy chair of the Asia Pacific Media Network/Te Koakoa NGO.


    The investiture ceremony on 24 May 2025.      Video: Office of the Governor-General  

    In an interview with Global Voices last year, Dr Robie praised the support from colleagues and students and said:

    “There should be more international reporting about the “hidden stories” of the Pacific such as the unresolved decolonisation issues — Kanaky New Caledonia, “French” Polynesia (Mā’ohi Nui), both from France; and West Papua from Indonesia.

    “West Papua, in particular, is virtually ignored by Western media in spite of the ongoing serious human rights violations. This is unconscionable.”

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Fiji can’t compete with Australia and NZ on teacher salaries, says deputy PM

    By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific presenter/bulletin editor

    Fiji cannot compete with Australia and New Zealand to retain its teachers, the man in charge of the country’s finances says.

    The Fijian education system is facing major challenges as the Sitiveni Rabuka-led coalition struggles to address a teacher shortage.

    While the education sector receives a significant chunk of the budget (about NZ$587 million), it has not been sufficient, as global demand for skilled teachers is pulling qualified Fijian educators toward greener pastures.

    Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Biman Prasad said that the government was training more teachers.

    “The government has put in measures, we are training enough teachers, but we are also losing teachers to Australia and New Zealand,” he told RNZ Pacific Waves on the sidelines of the University of the South Pacific Council meeting in Auckland last week.

    “We are happy that Australia and New Zealand gain those skills, particularly in the area of maths and science, where you have a shortage. And obviously, Fiji cannot match the salaries that teachers get in Australia and New Zealand.

    USP vice-chancellor Professor Pal Ahluwalia, Fiji’s Finance Minister Professor Biman Prasad and Education Minister Aseri Radrodro at the opening of the 99th USP Council Meeting at Auckland University last week. Image: RNZ Pacific/Lydia Lewis

    According to the Education Ministry’s Strategic Development Plan (2023-2026), the shortage of teachers is one of the key challenges, alongside limited resources and inadequate infrastructure, particularly for primary schools.

    Hundreds of vacancies
    Reports in local media in August last year said there were hundreds of teacher vacancies that needed to be filled.

    However, Professor Prasad said there were a lot of teachers who were staying in Fiji as the government was taking steps to keep teachers in the country.

    “We are training more teachers. We are putting additional funding, in terms of making sure that we provide the right environment, right support to our teachers,” he said.

    “In the last two years, we have increased the salaries of the civil service right across the board, and those salaries and wages range from between 10 to 20 percent.

    “We are again going to look at how we can rationalise some of the positions within the Education Ministry, right from preschool up to high school.”

    Meanwhile, the Fiji government is currently undertaking a review of the Education Act 1966.

    Education Minister Aseri Radrodro said in Parliament last month that a draft bill was expected to be submitted to Cabinet in July.

    “The Education Act 1966, the foundational law for pre-tertiary education in Fiji, has only been amended a few times since its promulgation, and has not undergone a comprehensive review,” he said.

    “It is imperative that this legislation be updated to reflect modern standards and address current issues within the education system.”

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

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Culture at the core: examining journalism values in the Pacific

    ANALYSIS: By Birte Leonhardt, Folker Hanusch and Shailendra B. Singh

    The role of journalism in society is shaped not only by professional norms but also by deeply held cultural values. This is particularly evident in the Pacific Islands region, where journalists operate in media environments that are often small, tight-knit and embedded within traditional communities.

    Our survey of journalists across Pacific Island countries provides new insight into how cultural values influence journalists’ self-perceptions and practices in the region. The findings are now available as an open access article in the journal Journalism.

    Cultural factors are particularly observable in many collectivist societies, where journalists emphasise their intrinsic connection to their communities. This includes the small and micro-media systems of the Pacific, where “high social integration” includes close familial ties, as well as traditional and cultural affiliations.

    The culture of the Pacific Islands is markedly distinct from Western cultures due to its collectivist nature, which prioritises group aspirations over individual aspirations. By foregrounding culture and values, our study demonstrates that the perception of their local cultural role is a dominant consideration for journalists, and we also see significant correlations between it and the cultural-value orientations of journalists.

    We approach the concept of culture from the viewpoint of journalistic embeddedness, that is, “the extent to which journalists are enmeshed in the communities, cultures, and structures in which and on whom they report, and the extent to which this may both enable and constrain their work”.

    The term embeddedness has often been considered undesirable in mainstream journalism, given ideals of detachment and objectivity which originated in the West and experiences of how journalists were embedded with military forces, such as the Iraq War.

    Yet, in alternative approaches to journalism, being close to those on whom they report has been a desirable value, such as in community journalism, whereas a critique of mainstream journalism has tended to be that those reporters do not really understand local communities.

    Cultural detachment both impractical and undesirable
     What is more, in the Global South, embeddedness is often viewed as an intrinsic element of journalists’ identity, making cultural detachment both impractical and undesirable.

    Recent research highlights that journalists in many regions of the world, including in unstable democracies, often experience more pronounced cultural influences on their work compared to their Western counterparts.

    To explore how cultural values and identity shape journalism in the region, we surveyed 206 journalists across nine countries: Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Nauru and the Marshall Islands.

    The study was conducted as part of a broader project about Pacific Islands journalists between mid-2016 and mid-2018. About four in five of journalists in targeted newsrooms agreed to participate, making this one of the largest surveys of journalists in the region.

    Respondents were asked about their perceptions of journalism’s role in society and the extent to which cultural values inform their work.

    Our respondents averaged just under 37 years of age and were relatively evenly split in terms of gender (49 percent identified as female) with most in full-time employment (94 percent). They had an average of nine years of work experience. Around seven in 10 had studied at university, but only two-thirds of those had completed a university degree.

    The findings showed that Pacific Islands journalists overwhelmingly supported ideas related to a local cultural role in reporting. A vast majority — 88 percent agreed that it was important for them to reflect local culture in reporting, while 75 percent also thought it was important to defend local traditions and values.

    Important to preserve local culture
    Further, 71 percent agreed it was important for journalists to preserve local culture. Together, these roles were considered substantially more important than traditional roles such as the monitorial role, where journalists pursue media’s watchdog function.

    This suggests Pacific islands journalists see themselves not just as neutral observers or critics but as active cultural participants — conveying stories that strengthen identity, continuity and community cohesion.

    To understand why journalists adopt this local cultural role, we looked at which values best predicted their orientation. We used a regression model to account for a range of potential influences, including socio-demographic aspects such as work experience, education, gender, the importance of religion and journalists’ cultural-value orientations.

    Our results showed that the best predictor for whether journalists thought it was important to pursue a local cultural role lay in their own value system. In fact, the extent to which journalists adhered to so-called conservative values like self-restraint, the preservation of tradition and resistance to change emerged as the strongest predictors.

    Hence, our findings suggest that journalists who emphasise tradition and social stability in their personal value systems are significantly more likely to prioritise a local cultural role.

    These values reflect a preference for preserving the status quo, respecting established customs, and fostering social harmony — all consistent with Pacific cultural norms.

    While the importance of cultural values was clear in how journalists perceive their role, the findings were more mixed when it came to reporting practices. In general, we found that such practices were valued.

    Considerable consensus on customs
    There was considerable consensus regarding the importance of respecting traditional customs in reporting, which 87 percent agreed with. A further 68 percent said that their traditional values guided their behaviour when reporting.

    At the same time, only 29 percent agreed with the statement that they were a member of their cultural group first and a journalist second, whereas 44 percent disagreed. Conversely, 52 percent agreed that the story was more important than respecting traditional customs and values, while 27 percent disagreed.

    These variations suggest that while Pacific journalists broadly endorse cultural preservation as a goal, the practical realities of journalism — such as covering conflict, corruption or political issues — may sometimes create tensions with cultural expectations.

    Our findings support the notion that Pacific Islands journalists are deeply embedded in local culture, informed by collective values, strong community ties and a commitment to tradition.

    Models of journalism training and institution-building that originated in the West often prioritise norms such as objectivity, autonomy and detached reporting, but in the Pacific such models may fall short or at least clash with the cultural values that underpin journalistic identity.

    These aspects need to be taken into account when examining journalism in the region.

    Recognising and respecting local value systems is not about compromising press freedom — it’s about contextualising journalism within its social environment. Effective support for journalism in the region must account for the realities of cultural embeddedness, where being a journalist often means being a community member as well.

    Understanding the values that motivate journalists — particularly the desire to preserve tradition and promote social stability — can help actors and policymakers engage more meaningfully with media practitioners in the region.

    Birte Leonhardt is a PhD candidate at the Journalism Studies Center at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her research focuses on journalistic cultures, values and practices, as well as interventionist journalism.

    Folker Hanusch is professor of journalism and heads the Journalism Studies Center at the University of Vienna, Austria. He is also editor-in-chief of Journalism Studies, and vice-chair of the Worlds of Journalism Study.

    Shailendra B. Singh is associate professor of Pacific journalism at the University of the South Pacific, based in Suva, Fiji, and a member of the advisory board of the Pacific Journalism Review.

    This article appeared first on Devpolicy Blog, from the Development Policy Centre at The Australian National University and is republished under Creative Commons.

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –

  • MIL-Evening Report: Speight’s Fiji coup had more to do with power, greed than iTaukei rights, says Chaudhry

    Today marks the 25th anniversary of the May 19, 2000, coup led by renegade businessman George Speight.

    The deposed Prime Minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, says Speight’s motive had less to do with indigenous rights and a lot more to do with power, greed, and access to the millions likely to accrue from Fiji’s mahogany plantation.

    On this day 25 years ago, the elected government was held hostage at the barrel of the gun, the Parliament complex started filling up with rebels supporting the takeover, Suva City and other areas in Fiji were looted and burnt, and innocent people were attacked just because of their race.

    Chaudhry said indigenous emotions were “deliberately ignited to beat up support for the treasonous actions of the terrorists”.

    He said the coup threw the nation into chaos from which it had not fully recovered even to this day.

    Chaudhry said using George Speight as a frontman, the “real perpetrators” of the coup, assisted by a group of armed rebels from the Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF), held Chaudhry and members of his government hostage for 56 days as they plundered, looted and terrorised the Indo-Fijian community in various parts of the country.

    The Fiji Labour Party leader said that, as with current Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, who led the first two coups in 1987, so with Speight in May 2000, that the given reason for the treason and the mayhem that followed was to “protect the rights and interests of the indigenous community”.

    Chaudhry said today that it was widely acknowledged that the rights of the indigenous community was not endangered either in 1987 or in 2000.

    He added that they were simply used to pursue personal and political agendas.

    Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka with former prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry . . . apology accepted during the Girmit Day Thanksgiving and National Reconciliation church service at the Vodafone Arena in Suva. Image: Jonacani Lalakobau/The Fiji Times

    The FLP leader said those who benefitted were the elite in Fijian society, not ordinary people.

    Chaudhry said this was obvious from current statistics which showed that currently the iTaukei surveyed made up 75 percent of those living in poverty.

    He said poverty reports in the early 1990s showed practically a balance in the number of Fijians and Indo-Fijians living in poverty.

    Prisoner George Speight speaking to inmates in 2011 . . . he and his rogue gunmen seized then Prime Minister Mahendra Chaudhry and his government hostage in a 2000 crisis that lasted for 56 days. Image: Fijivillage News/YouTube screenshot

    The former prime minister says it was obvious that the coups had done nothing to improve the quality of life of the ordinary indigenous iTaukei.

    Instead, he said the coups had had a devastating impact on the entire socio-economic fabric of Fiji’s society, putting the nation decades behind in terms of development.

    Chaudhry said the sorry state of Fiji today — “the suffering of our people and continued high rate of poverty, deteriorating health and education services, the failing infrastructure and weakened state of our economy” — were all indicators of how post-coup governments had failed to deliver on the expectations of the people.

    He said: “It is time for us to rise above discredited notions of racism and fundamentalism and embrace progressive, liberal thinking.”

    Chaudhry added that leaders needed to be judged on their vision and performance and not on their colour and creed.

    Republished with permission from FijiVillage News.

    2000 attempted coup leader George Speight with a bodyguard and supporters during the siege drama in May 2000. Image: Fijivillage News

    Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

    MIL OSI Analysis – EveningReport.nz –