By Kendall Hutt in Auckland

Australia’s offshore refugee detention centres in the Pacific are facing further controversy as the gradual closure and demolition of the institution on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea begins.

Following the announcement of Papua New Guinean authorities last month, one compound has already been closed, with another planned for June 30.

The closure and demolition comes after PNG’s Supreme Court ruled in April last year the centre was illegal and unconstitutional.

It is expected to be fully demolished by October 31 when Ferrovial’s contract expires – the company accused of profiting off refugees’ suffering.

However, Amnesty International says the move will not end the suffering of the 829 refugees on the island.

“These people are to be left in limbo,” Kate Schuetze, a Pacific research and policy adviser with Amnesty International based in Australia, told Asia Pacific Report.

Despite the apparent hope provided by Papua New Guinea’s announcement on the surface, Schuetze said the reality for refugees was “a lot darker”.

‘No plans to resettle refugees’
“Essentially refugees are being shifted from one camp to another.”

Papua New Guinea authorities say refugees will be repatriated or settled in the nearby town of Lorengau, where the Manus Refugee Transit Centre is located.

Shuetze said Australia’s ultimate goal with this announcement is what it had always been — pressure for refugees to return home.

“I mean, there were no plans to resettle these refugees in Papua New Guinea to start with.”

The centre’s closure and demolition – described by Shuetze as a “phasing out” – also means refugees will endure worsening conditions, as many are moved to other compounds within the centre.

“Essentially this means harsher conditions for refugees.”

Shuetze said there would be no air conditioning and communities, forged over four years, would be disbanded. “There is no rationale behind this added torture.”

‘It’s not safe’
Grant Bayldon, executive director of Amnesty New Zealand, believes things are more unclear.

“It’s very unclear what the planned closure means at this stage. Clearly it’s not safe for the refugees and asylum seekers to be settled into Papua New Guinea,” he said.

“It’s therefore essential that the Australian government comes up with a plan to resettle refugees back to Australia or safely in a third country like New Zealand.”

Bayldon fears the centre’s closure will also not remove its fundamental problems.

“Refugees are not safe and there’s really no hope for them in being able to restart their lives and living in safety due to the minimal protection they’ve been offered.”

Amnesty International fears refugees may also be sent to Australia’s other refugee detention centre on Nauru, which reportedly has the second highest rate of mental illness of any refugee population in the world.

Security before empathy
The move by Australian and Papua New Guinean authorities has increased calls by Amnesty International New Zealand for the government to stand by its 2013 offer to resettle 150 refugees a year from Australia’s detention centres.

Australia’s Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has in the past rejected New Zealand’s offer claiming Australia’s national security has to come before its empathy.

Turnbull claimed in 2016 resettlement in New Zealand would be used by people smugglers as a “marketing opportunity”.

Despite such statements, New Zealand should renew its offer, Bayldon said.

“It doesn’t look like the Australian government’s going to do the right thing any time soon, so it’s really important that other governments — including New Zealand’s — put up their hands and offer to safely resettle refugees so that they can restart their lives.”

Bayldon believes New Zealand has remained silent on Australia’s detention centres for far too long.

“Through two different New Zealand foreign ministers and two different New Zealand prime ministers, we are yet to hear the New Zealand government properly call out Australia for its abuse and illegal treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.

‘New Zealand needs to speak out’
“It’s absolutely incoherent for it not to call out Australia with appalling abuses going on in its own neighbourhood, right here in the Pacific. New Zealand needs to speak out more strongly than it has so far.”

Primary responsibility, however, rested with Australia, he said.

“It’s the Australian government which put people in these abusive detention centres in breach of international law and it’s the Australian government’s responsibility to get them to safety.”

Despite this, Manus Island refugees have written to New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English seeking asylum.

“We can understand why they’ve written to the New Zealand government, and while the primary responsibility lies with the Australian government, this really is an opportunity for the New Zealand government to stand up for its own values and do the right thing,” Bayldon said.

“What we see from refugees and asylum seekers is what they want is to be able to get on with their lives. They want to be able to work, they want to be able to contribute, and New Zealand is a place where they could do that.”

• Amnesty blasts foreign companies over ‘profiting’ from Nauru refugees abuse

Speaking about the controversial Manus Asylum Centre saga, Prime Minister Peter O’Neill says the deal was signed and agreed to for the development of Manus province. Video: EMTV News in Tok Pisin

Pacific Media Watch News Desk

The largest crowd ever to attend an election campaign rally on Manus greeted Prime Minister Peter O’Neill as he campaigned with Manus Governor Charlie Benjamin and Manus Open candidate Job Pomat, reports EMTV News.

Leading the People’s National Congress (PNC) campaign rally, O’Neill said Manus had great potential from its marine resources, particularly in areas such as fisheries and tourism.

As the campaign draws to the end of eight weeks of campaigning, O’Neill said yesterday now was the time for candidates who had not demonstrated any policy platforms to reveal if they have any policies.

“Now is the time to talk about your policies, to talk about your vision and reveal if you have anything to offer,” the Prime Minister said.

“Candidates need to discuss issues of national importance with a clear set of polices and vision for the nation.

“Instead many, particularly some former leaders, are dropping down to attacking personalities and spreading rumours.

“Our country deserves strong policy platforms from those aspiring to form government, not hollow statements and foolish claims.

‘Start being realistic’
“The candidates who are now part of one-and-two-man parties have to start being realistic.

“You have Sir Mekere [Morauta] saying he will be PM, and so is Don Polye, and Sam Basil, and all the others, but one-and-two is a long way from 56.”

The Prime Minister said he has no intention of debating with any aspirant PM if they could not demonstrate that they had the support of enough opposition members.

“I am not going to waste my time debating someone who does not have the support to potentially lead a parliamentary majority.

“If one of these opposition leaders gets the backing of their counterparts to be the opposition’s candidate for prime minister, they will get their debate.

“If Ben Micah, Patrick Pruaitch, and Belden Namah, and all the other leaders come out and say publicly they are supporting Don Polye, or another leader, they will get their debate.

“But while they are a loose gaggle of dividend group of rivals, this will not happen.”

Western eyes ‘a mistake’
The Prime Minister said the mistake some commentators made was to look at the PNG  election through Western eyes.

“In Australia, historically opposition leaders are often just a few seats away from forming government.

“In Papua New Guinea, the Opposition Leader is more than 50 seats away from forming government.

“The same goes for Mekere, he is just one of the 3000 plus candidates in this election.

“He has no party support, he is yesterday’s man who abandoned his own party that he founded. He has no principles or loyalty, so why would any of the opposition leaders want to follow him?”

The Prime Minister thanked Manus for the hospitality they extended to the PNC delegation and promised them that Charlie Benjamin and Job Pomat would work hard for Manus and further improve lives.

“Manus has huge potential in tourism and fisheries, and has the potential to keep advancing.

“A lot has changed in Manus over the past five years, and communities are economically stronger than in decades past.

“We must keep changing Manus, we must keep staying strong and deliver an even stronger economy for our nation and for provinces like Manus.”

By Kendall Hutt in Auckland

Forty minutes of solidarity marked New Zealand’s stand with refugees imprisoned in Australia’s offshore detention centres across the Pacific today.

More than 60 people stood outside Australia’s Auckland consulate to protest over more than 1000 refugees stuck in limbo in processing centres likened to open-air prisons.

“The Australian government’s policies are inhumane, so we want to highlight the human. That the impact of Australia’s ill-treatment of people seeking asylum and refugees amounts to torture, but remind people that these refugees are humans too,” said Margaret Taylor, Amnesty New Zealand’s activism support manager.

“We’re humans standing out here to put a human face to the torture and highlighting how inhumane Australia’s policy is.”

Amnesty New Zealand’s Auckland spokesperson Meg de Ronde told Asia Pacific Report before the protest this morning:

“We’re sending a clear message to the Australian government that after four years the offshore detention centres have to close.

“The men, women and children who are on Manus and Nauru have to be evacuated now. We have more than 8000 New Zealanders who believe human rights abuses need to end,” de Ronde said.

8000 signature petition
In Wellington, more than 40 people also stood in solidarity while a petition with more than  8000 signatures was delivered to the Australian High Commission in a sister event also organised by Amnesty International New Zealand.

Since 2013, Australia has controversially and forcibly deported asylum seekers who have attempted to arrive in the country via boat to Manus and Nauru islands.

Therefore for four years, Amnesty International says, some of the “most vulnerable people in the world” have been subject to human rights abuses – physical abuse, sexual assault, poor living conditions – at the hands of Australia’s government.

De Ronde says the purpose of this morning’s protest was to ensure Australia has not forgotten the human rights abuses it is carrying out in its own backyard.

“We hope they’ll hear New Zealanders haven’t forgotten that for four years Australia’s been holding people on Manus and Nauru, people that have a right to be resettled and have a right to flee and seek safety.”

It is Australia’s reported human rights abuses which drew people of all walks of life to the protest.

Armed with placards calling for the closure of Manus and Nauru’s centres, the group of men, women and children silently protested outside the consulate while passing motorists tooted their horns in a show of support.

‘Ridiculous’ detention centres
Alex O’Connor of Lush Cosmetics said it was “ridiculous” detention centres even existed.

“I think it’s just ridiculous they still have these detention centres when there’s all these human rights abuses happening.

“I also think it’s just ridiculous that people don’t have access to basic human rights when they’re fleeing war-torn areas.”

Marika Czaja is so disappointed in Australia’s refugee policy she intends to return her citizenship papers.

“I’m going to say ‘no thank you’. I don’t want to be part of it, not in my name’.

“I’ve got no option but to protest. One of the more powerful countries in the world is boasting how it took in half a million or so refugees after World War II and now they can’t take in a few thousand. It’s just despicable. I really haven’t got the words to explain how I feel about it all,” Czaja said.

The youngest protester was four-year-old Atlas de Ronde.

‘Issue for everyone’
His father, Edwin de Ronde, said the detention centres on Manus and Nauru were an “issue for everyone”.

“We feel for what it must be like for people with children stuck in some of these concentration camps and I think everyone needs to understand that it could be them one day too, so they’ve got to stand up against what’s going on.”

Echoing earlier calls by Amnesty New Zealand executive director Grant Bayldon, de Ronde called on New Zealand to condemn Australia’s actions and remain firm in its commitment to resettle 150 refugees a year – a commitment Australia is currently reluctant to indulge.

“New Zealanders – neighbours of Australia – need to stand up in this region as the voice of what needs to be done.

“I hope the Australian government understands that they’re out of step with the rest of the world and what they’re doing is simply wrong and it’s against international law.”

Takapuna Grammar students Alba Garcia and Anna Jacobs were also some of the protest’s younger participants.

They told Asia Pacific Report the proximity of the issue to New Zealand was “shocking”.

Close to home
“It has just kind of shocked everyone how close it is to home,” Jacobs said of her school’s Amnesty Club.

“Everyone needs to be aware of it because it’s not very far away from us,” Garcia added.

But in calling for the closure of Manus and Nauru on the streets of Auckland today, de Ronde thanked protesters for not forgetting the islands’ refugees, but also encouraged them to make New Zealand politicians and political parties more aware of the issue.

“Ask our Prime Minister, our government in this election year to carry these messages.”

Joining hands in solidarity may have marked the end of the protest today, but with Broadspectrum’s contract up in October – the company responsible for administering the offshore processing system – protest to these centres is sure to continue, Amnesty said.

Krishna Narayanan, a food science student with the University of Auckland, is certain widespread protest will continue until Australia reverses its policy on Manus and Nauru detention.

“Refugees are just locked up and they feel incredibly isolated and depressed. They escaped war and tried to come to a place of safety, but they’re not safe.

“My message to those inside the Australian consulate here and Australia’s government is accept refugees or at least let other nations accept them.

“Don’t cover this up.”

• Closure of Manus Island will leave refugees in ‘limbo’, says Amnesty
• Amnesty blasts foreign companies over ‘profiting’ from Nauru refugees abuse

Manus Island prison … as reported by Leah Harding about Iranian filmmaker Behrouz Boochani and the docomentary Chauka: Please Tell Us The Time at #AJNewsgrid. Al Jazeera video

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

Australia will pay A$70 million (US$56 million) to asylum seekers detained in Papua New Guinea, after a senior judge has approved a major compensation package, reports Al Jazeera.

The state of Victoria’s Supreme Court awarded the funds yesterday to more than 1300 refugees held at a centre on Manus Island between November 2012 and December 2014, on the grounds of illegal detention and negligent treatment.

The remainder of the almost 2000 detainees from that period have been granted an extra two and a half weeks to join the class action and register for payment if they wish to.

Justice Cameron Macauley declared the decision, which is believed to be the nation’s largest human rights settlement, “fair and reasonable”.

Australia offered the compensation agreement in June, more than three years after lawyers initiated the case brought against the government and two service providers operating on the island.

Officials have previously declared the deal “prudent”, but denied wrongdoing.

Tough policy on asylum seekers
Australian policy dictates that asylum seekers attempting to reach the country by boat are transferred to detention facilities in the Pacific Ocean on Manus, or the island of Nauru; which was not involved in the litigation.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Nick McKim, immigration spokesperson for the Australian Green Party, said: “The government of Australia wants to appear politically tough on refugees and tough on people seeking asylum.”

As a result, political leaders have a “political imperative” to treat the detainees inhumanely, he said, and “that’s exactly what they’ve done.”

The centre on Manus is due to close next month, following a PNG Supreme Court ruling last year that declared the holding of people on the island was unconstitutional.

The 803 men currently detained will be moved elsewhere in Papua New Guinea, or relocated to third countries, according to government officials.

Lawyers representing the refugees who generated the claim said they are seeking to secure the compensation payment before the centre shuts.

“These detainees came to Australia seeking refuge, compassion and protection, which were all denied to them by successive Commonwealth governments,” said Rory Walsh of the law firm Slater and Gordon.

“Today, the group has finally been delivered justice through the Australian legal system and the Supreme Court of Victoria. The result … will allow meaningful compensation to be paid to group members much more quickly than would otherwise have been the case.”

Distribution of the funds will be overseen by the court, with another hearing scheduled for October to determine when payments will begin.

• Other Manus Island detention centre stories

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

The Australian government will be offering money to refugees on Manus Island who agree to return to their home countries as it rushes to shut down the detention centre in Papua New Guinea, reports the PNG Post-Courier.

While most of the refugees have refused to stay in Papua New Guinea, Australia has promised to give each refugee $25,000 if they agree to return to their country of origin.

Last year, PNG’s Supreme Court reflected global protests when it ruled the detention centre breached human rights and ordered its closure.

Many praised the closure as a good thing. However, the United Nations has slammed the “deteriorating conditions” inside the facility as utilities are cut off.

The plight of the Rohingya refugees has been well-documented in the media in recent times.

They are an ethnic group from the southern state of Rakhine in Myanmar, but since 1982 the government has denied them citizenship.

It is estimated almost one million of them have fled their home country since the government began routine crackdowns in the 1970s.

Approximately 370,000 have fled in the last few weeks alone.

Asylum seeker dies
The ABC’s Papua New Guinea correspondent, Eric Tlozek, reports police on Manus Island have confirmed an asylum seeker has died overnight.

A 32-year-old Sri Lankan Tamil man was found near the kitchen of the Lorengau Hospital after reports he was mentally unwell, Tlozek reports.

Friends of the man said it appeared he took his own life and Australian authorities have confirmed the death.

“The department is aware of the death at Lorengau Hospital,” a spokesman for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection said.

• More Papua New Guinea stories

By Kirsty Johnston of The New Zealand Herald

Most of Golriz Ghahraman’s childhood memories are of war.

She remembers howling sirens, sending families scurrying into basements. She remembers people being trapped. She remembers families trying to escape the country, fearful of being targeted for their beliefs.

Others simply disappeared.

“We knew one guy… a 16-year-old, a friend’s cousin. He was writing graffiti on a wall and then he was gone,” she says. “In the 1980s people would just disappear. There’s unmarked mass graves of people who had registered as communists. The regime was particularly harsh on political dissidents.”

READ MORE: Election 2017: Labour-Green bloc picks up two seats

Ghahraman, the Green Party’s newest Member of Parliament following the special vote count, was born in Iran in 1981 amid the post-revolution conflict with Iraq.

She was confirmed on Saturday as a new MP after the counting of almost 390,000 special votes.

The fighting stopped when she was eight. A year later the borders opened and her parents found a way to leave, booking a government-sanctioned “holiday” to Malaysia.

“I think people knew what was happening because they were crying at the airport, but we had to be like, ‘Bye, we’re going to have a great time.’ We couldn’t sell the house or anything.”

Seeking asylum
From Malaysia they booked flights to Fiji that had a stopover in Auckland, where they hoped they could seek asylum as political refugees.

After slipping out of transit and declaring themselves to an airport official, the family found staff more worried about potential biosecurity hazards than their visa status.

“There was a leaf in one of my shoes,” Ghahraman says. “They were intensely interested in that, like almost sending it away for analysis.”

Ghahraman liked her new country. It was okay to be a refugee in West Auckland; it was okay to be poor. Auckland Girls’ Grammar was similarly diverse. She didn’t feel special, or different to the other girls.

It wasn’t until university – where she studied law to keep her parents happy and history to please herself – Ghahraman began to think more about her heritage.

“We aren’t the proponents of terror”

“Nine-eleven shifted things for me,” she says. “I’d forgotten that we were Iranian or Middle Eastern. I was just doing my thing and then I realised the way other people see you can be defining.

“So I started to own that identity.”

‘Rescued’ from her culture
Because she wore Western clothes – Ghahraman isn’t Muslim – and went to university, people liked to think she had been “rescued” from her own culture.

“But it’s not like that. Yes we are from the Middle Eastern world but we aren’t the proponents of terror. We’ve had to escape the terror but that doesn’t make us not Middle Eastern.

“Our culture has diversity too, it has feminism and democracy movements.”

The interest in her country’s war and a broader interest in human rights led her to Amnesty International, where she set her sights on working as a prosecutor at international war crimes tribunals.

“I’m one of those freak shows that had a 10-year plan,” she says. “I knew I had to get criminal law experience and a masters degree. So I did the bar, I did criminal law and I had an Oxford course bookmarked on my computer.”

Her CV, which includes prosecuting leaders of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, sounds intimidatingly impressive. In person, however, Ghahraman is comfortingly human, answering the door for our interview pre-election in stockinged feet, having rushed to finish her make-up.

Prosecuting for the United Nations
She says the international tribunals weren’t so different to her early work as a defence lawyer in Manukau.

“It’s just like any criminal trial – although the politicians are so charismatic. You have to simply focus back on the evidence and just be a lawyer.”

Ghahraman left her job in Cambodia in 2012, arriving back at the end of National’s second term. She felt like everything had changed.

“We used to pride ourselves on being a country where our values were about everyone having a certain basic level of life,” she says. “We were so big here on taking care of everyone and suddenly that was gone.”

She cites the plans to prospect for coal in national reserves, child poverty and democracy issues – like dissolving the Canterbury regional council – as incidents that jolted her into joining politics.

The other was the family carers bill, passed into legislation under urgency, which explicitly removed families’ rights to challenge funding decisions in court. Ghahraman later worked on the case.

“We had never seen that in New Zealand before, never had this willingness politically to interfere with the other institutions – the courts, the free press, the human rights agencies – and that’s concerning.”

Forging a political career
Those are the kinds of issues she says she wants to focus on in Parliament.

During the campaign, however, she faced abuse over a number of other unrelated issues – mainly from Twitter – such as comments about her ethnicity, her intelligence and her looks.

“It didn’t bother me at all at first, but some days you open it and it’s like, really?” she says. “And to think that some people are being silenced by this. At least I can respond.”

In her increasingly rare spare time, Ghahraman likes to travel with her partner, comedian Guy Williams. She also likes to host dinner parties, despite confessing to being a bad cook.

She remains a member of the executive of the NZ Criminal Bar Association, and says her criminal law experience – where she spent a lot of time trying to help people into rehab or other support – is central to the way she wants to approach her political career.

“How we treat everyone, including the delinquents, that’s the making of us,” she says.

Kirsty Johnston is an investigative reporter at The New Zealand Herald. This article has been republished with permission.

• What the specials mean for the NZ election result
• More NZ election stories

By Kendall Hutt in Auckland

Black-and-white photographs are aiming to start a conversation and dispel myths around former refugees and asylum seekers in New Zealand.

Transplanted: Refugee portraits of New Zealand showcases two-metre tall, black-and white-close-up portraits of former refugees by award-winning photographer Alistair Guthrie.

The portraits are currently on display in a ten-day exhibition at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery in Wellington.

“Refugees lives have been pulled up from the roots and transplanted on new soil,” explains curator and journalist Tracey Barnett.

“I created Transplanted because I wanted to show the regeneration of lives, that these people can become our future – carpenters and teachers and insurance brokers and our art gallery directors just like anyone else.

“In New Zealand about roughly 45 percent of our quota intake are children. They grow up to be Kiwis in every sense of the word.

“You may not even recognise that they began life as a refugee because they speak with a Kiwi accent, eat pineapple lumps, and cheer for the All Blacks on a Saturday night just as loudly as anyone else,” Barnett said.

Refugee ‘talking space’
Transplanted opened with a talk by former Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer on Friday and continues until Sunday, November 5 with insights from former refugees and international diplomats.

The gallery exhibition is also a “refugee talking space”, intended to turn the tide on negative perceptions of refugees, both globally and closer to home.

“It has been incredibly saddening and worrying to see the label of refugees become so disrespected.

“These people have overcome tremendous odds and tremendous difficulties to get to safety, something any of us would aspire to,” Barnett told Asia Pacific Report.

Barnett, who serves on the executive board of the Refugee Council of New Zealand, said the media was partly to blame.

“Unfortunately the media shows these people always in the worst moments of their lives, but the reality is that it’s just one short chapter of a much bigger life.”

A highlight has been the ‘Human Library’ sessions, Barnett said, where former refugees speak one-on-one with the public.

Lives in limbo
“It’s been incredibly moving, enjoyable and informative I think for everyone who’s participated and it’s a real highlight.”

But while some refugees lives have been “transplanted on new soil” in New Zealand, the lives of asylum seekers in one of Australia’s offshore detention centres remain in limbo.

“These refugees have every reason to be afraid and every reason to be worried that they will not be protected and they will not be safe,” Barnett said.

The words of Wage Peace NZ’s founder come as a 2013 offer by New Zealand to take in 150 refugees a year from Australia’s detention centres remains “nixed” by Australia.

This means asylum seekers on Manus Island, around 600 of whom are refusing to leave the now closed centre, are being forced to relocate to several sites in nearby Lorengau – including the Manus Refugee Transit Centre – or “trade one hell for another” for the “other prison island” of Nauru where human rights abuses are rife, Barnett said.

Many of the single men who remain on Manus fear for their lives, with reports locals have allegedly already looted the centre.

Barnett said “there have been worrying and frightening outbreaks of violence” in the past.  

Manus supplies cut
These outbreaks of violence include a shooting on April 14, 2017 in which bullets were directly fired into the refugee centre by security forces.

All power, water and food supplies have stopped at the refugee processing centre.

A notice posted by Papua New Guinea’s Immigration and Citizenship Service Authority stated all staff had left and the site would be returned to the Defence Force today.

“This is the last communication you will receive at this location,” the notice stated.

The closure of Manus Island comes after PNG’s Supreme Court ruled last year the centre was illegal and unconstitutional.

Barnett said New Zealand’s new Labour-led government should also be applying “huge pressure” and push to renegotiate its 2013 deal with Australia.  

“This makes a perfect opportunity for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to stand back and say ‘I’m a new government, this is a new possibility, let’s talk about doing this as a one-off instead and helping you evacuate the camps, but you must agree to not reopen them’,” Barnett said.

Examine NZ offer
Ardern has said she would renew the offer after examining the proposal Australia continues to reject.

“I want to look at the detail of the offer that was made and the obligations that we’ve set out that we would take on,” she said.

“Of course that would be within our refugee quota, and within existing intent that we’ve shared with the UN around taking UN mandated refugees.”

Green MP Golriz Ghahraman, herself a former refugee from Iran, has recently labelled New Zealand’s alleged silence over the past four years as ‘complicity’.

Ghahraman will be speaking this evening at the exhibition on the ‘I am not a label: Young refugee voices’ panel.

Manus Island’s closure also provides an opportunity to provide “fresh eyes” on New Zealand’s own refugee policies, Barnett said.

“New Zealand has never pulled its weight when it comes to our quota.

‘We can do more’
“Unfortunately we rank 95th worst in the world per capita for the total number of refugees and asylum seekers we host.

“If you measure it by our relative wealth, our GDP, it’s even worse and we rank 121st worst in the world.

“That isn’t good enough and we can do more,” Barnett said.

Although it was “wonderful” New Zealand’s quota was going up to 1500, Barnett stated it would be a while before refugees felt its impact.

“The quota is only reviewed every three years and we’ll be changing our quota in 2018. It will be several years again before we hit that 1500 mark.

“I’m hoping that the government will consider changing that number earlier and faster to make a bigger impact.

“We can do more and we should.”

• Transplanted: Refugee Portraits of New Zealand
• More Manus Island stories 

The squalor faced by Manus Island refugees in Papua New Guinea. TRT video

Pacific Media Centre Newsdesk

New Zealand activists have chained themselves to the gates of the Australian High Commission in Wellington while Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has reaffirmed the country’s offer to take some of the refugees and asylum-seekers from Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.

News reports said the purpose of the Wellington protest was to prevent anyone inside from leaving, Peace Action Wellington spokeswoman Emma Cullen said.

About 20 protesters were reported outside the high commission yesterday afternoon, of whom three or four were chained to the gates.

The protesters hoped to stop high commission staff leaving last evening, to highlight the plight of the about Manus detainees whose basic services have been cut off by the authorities.

“We’re shutting them down for as long as we can … at least until the evening, to affect these people, and for these people to acknowledge and question what their government is doing,” Cullen said, according to Stuff.

In Manila for the APEC meeting, Prime Minister Ardern has been seeking a meeting with Australian counterpart Malcolm Turnbull to discuss further New Zealand’s offer to take 150 refugees from Manus.

Turnbull has suffered a disastrous popularity slump, according to The Australian newspaper.

The PNG Supreme Court has forced the closure of Ausytralia’s offshore detention centre for asylum seekers but many have refused to leave in spite of the power, water and food supplies being cut off.

Papua New Guinea immigration officials last week started dismantling parts of a prison camp housing hundreds of defiant refugees as an evacuation deadline loomed yesterday. Video: Al Jazeera

OPINION: By Murray Horton of the Aotearoa Independence Movement

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is to be congratulated for trying to do the decent thing by, in her words, “offering to lend a hand” with regards to Australia’s appalling treatment of refugees detained, then abandoned, on Manus Island (not to forget the others detained on Nauru).

Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull tried to swat her away by saying that he has a deal with the US to take the Manus men – I think pigs will fly before Donald Trump honours what he calls “the worst deal ever”, made by Barack Obama.

Nor do I see why there is anything stopping Jacinda from dealing directly with Papua New Guinea. After all, the Manus Island men are being detained in its country and Australia has abandoned them. NZ and PNG are two independent countries, so what’s to stop the two governments sorting out this mess of Australia’s making?

And let’s give credit where credit’s due – the John Key National government made the same offer, namely to take some of the Manus men. It got the same response from Australia. That just goes to show that NZ Tories have got more humanity (in this case, at least) than their Aussie counterparts.

And, to his further credit, Key refused to countenance creating a new category of second class New Zealanders, ones with no rights to travel to Australia. Because that’s why pig-headed Turnbull and co won’t take up NZ’s bipartisan offer.

The excuse given is that the Manus men could then enter Australia through the New Zealand “back door” — i.e. via the free entry allowed to New Zealanders.

That is just so much crap. There is a precedent for New Zealand cleaning up Australia’s refugee mess, namely the Clark government taking in a swag of people from the Norwegian freighter Tampa, which was famously blocked by John Howard in 2001. Not only that, NZ did the decent thing and let their families join them.

‘Back door’ myth
Hands up if you’ve heard of any of those people going to Australia via the “New Zealand back door” and becoming “terrorists”. No, I thought not. Those Tampa refugees made their lives in New Zealand and have become an asset to this country.

Australia needs to hang its head in shame (this crime against humanity has been perpetrated by both Liberal and Labor governments). If you read, heard or saw a news report about civilians imprisoned without charge, trial or hope of release, who were then abandoned without food, water, power or toilets and in imminent fear of attack and/or death by hostile locals, your first reaction would probably be that this was the latest atrocity by ISIS.

And that’s how we need to judge this – Australia is enacting a policy of state terrorism. Its “Pacific Solution” is starting to resemble the Final Solution that Australia and New Zealand fought to defeat in World War Two.

I’ve experienced a little bit of this deprivation myself – no power, water or toilet for several days after the February 2011 Christchurch quake, and it was no fun in a First World society where we had the expectation that somebody would do something about it ASAP. How much worse it must feel then on a Third World island, with no such expectation.

But if our government is serious about “lending a hand”, then it needs to look much further than the (admittedly spectacular) symptoms like Manus Island, and do something about the causes of the global refugee crisis.

Why are these tens of millions of people (of whom only a few hundred are the victims of Australia’s unforgiveable cruelty) fleeing their home countries?

Plenty will be economic refugees, they simply want a better life for their children and themselves. That is a story as old as humanity. That is why several hundred thousand New Zealanders have moved to Australia, after all. It is the same reason why my Australian grandfather moved from Queensland to Wellington – to get a job.

Global poverty, wars
The cause is global poverty and inequality. That’s a very big problem, and tiny little New Zealand can only do so much about that. But we can do our share, and we can start from the recognition articulated by the most unlikely of sources – Winston Peters – that more and more people see capitalism as their foe and not their friend.

He was talking about New Zealanders, so multiply that by the billions of people living at the coalface of global capitalism and you start to get an idea of the scale of the problem. Capitalism is predicated on a few winners and an awful lot of losers.

Not unreasonably, tens of millions of these “losers” want to move to where they think they can join the “winners” (they are bound to be disillusioned by what they discover upon arrival, but that’s another story).

Hand in glove with global poverty as a cause of refugees is war. This is a direct and immediate cause of huge numbers of people fleeing for their lives. There is nothing unusual about people running away from a big disaster, whether man-made or natural – tens of thousands of Christchurch people fled the city in the hours after that February 2011 killer quake (and plenty of them have not come back).

This is an area where the new government can deal with the root cause of the global refugee crisis – get out of other people’s wars that we’re already involved in (such as Afghanistan and Iraq); stay out of the absolute tarpit that is Syria; don’t go haring off after Donald Trump if he goes to war in Korea.

More fundamentally, build on the good work done in the 1980s (which made NZ nuclear free and out of ANZUS) and get out of the Five Eyes spy network and break the remaining military ties that bind NZ to the US Empire. Build a truly non-aligned and independent foreign policy that prioritises peace over war.

There is a direct cause and effect between war and refugees. Our “traditional allies” are very good at creating the mess via war, then expressing indignant surprise when that very same mess comes back to bite them in the bum in the form of a human tide. Libya is a textbook case – NATO military powers, with US assistance, played a vital role in violently overthrowing the Gaddafi regime in 2011 (including being complicit in his being tortured to death).

Even Iraq’s Saddam Hussein got a show trial before his enemies killed him. Funnily enough, Libya has been a failed state ever since and Europe has been inundated with refugees arriving by sea – dead or alive – from Libya. I imagine Gaddafi is laughing in his grave.

‘Charity begins at home’
So, there is self-interest for New Zealand in staying out of other people’s wars and in working to end existing wars and preventing new ones. And for those who say “charity begins at home” – I agree.

We can help our immediate neighbours on tiny Pacific islands that are threatened by inundation due to climate change. These people did nothing to cause that problem but New Zealand certainly did and continues to do – we have an obligation to open our doors to these climate change refugees.

That is not a solution to the problem (at least this government recognises there is a problem and has pledged to do something about it) but it is an amelioration of the dire effects of that problem. Even if we took in all of those affected Pacific islanders, plus the prisoners from Manus and Nauru, it would all only add up to a few thousand people. We bring in more foreigners than that every year to milk them in shonky “education” courses and to supply New Zealand employers with cheap labour.

How about we change the emphasis from bringing people in to exploit and rip them off to bringing them to help them and, as the Tampa experience shows, helping ourselves in the process? Sounds like a win-win to me.

Murray Horton
Spokesperson
Aotearoa Independence Movement (AIM)

• NZ protesters lock gates of Australian High Commission in Manus protest
• NZ urged to bypass Australia to resolve refugee crisis
• Turnbull urges respect for PNG law as NZ offer on Manus refugees stirs up Senate

OPINION: By Chris Trotter

You have to go a long way to find anything remotely resembling Australia’s current treatment of New Zealand.

For a supposedly friendly government to deliberately inject inflammatory disinformation into the political bloodstream of its supposedly closest neighbour is an extraordinarily provocative act. Not quite an act of war, but the sort of intervention that can all-too-easily provoke a catastrophic loss of trust.

It’s the sort of thing that the Soviets and the Americans used to do to one another all the time during the Cold War. Except, of course, those two superpowers were ideological and geopolitical rivals of the first order. It takes a real effort to re-cast the relationship between New Zealand and Australia in similar terms. Nevertheless, it’s an effort we are now obliged to make.

So, what is it that Australia has done? Essentially, its national security apparatus (presumably at the instigation of their political leaders) has released, mostly through media surrogates, a number of related stories calculated to inflame the prejudices of a certain type of New Zealander.

Like Australia, New Zealand harbours a frighteningly large number of racists. Politically-speaking, such people are easily aroused and have few qualms about setting-off ugly, racially-charged, debates on talkback radio, in the letters columns of the daily newspapers and across social media. These individuals are trouble enough when all they have to fight with are their own stereotypes and prejudices. Arm them with the carefully assembled disinformation of “fake news” and they instantly become quite dangerous.

Planting stories
And yet, this is exactly what the Australian authorities have done. Planting stories in their own press (knowing they will be picked up almost immediately by our own) about at least four boatloads of illegal immigrants that have set out for New Zealand only to be intercepted and turned back by the ever-vigilant officers of the Royal Australian Navy and their Coast Guard comrades.

The purpose of this story (unsourced and lacking in detail, making it, almost certainly, fake news) was to paint New Zealand’s prime minister as an ill-informed and ungrateful diplomatic naïf: an inexperienced young idealist who doesn’t know which way is up when it comes to dealing with real-world problems.

This, alone, was an extraordinary intervention. To gauge how extraordinary, just turn it around. Imagine the reaction in Australia if some unnamed person in New Zealand’s national security apparatus leaked a memo to one of this country’s daily newspapers in which the negative diplomatic and economic consequences of being tainted by association with Australia’s flouting of international law is set forth in clinical detail. If the memo also contained a collection of highly critical assessments of Turnbull’s cabinet colleagues, allegedly passed-on by a number of unnamed western diplomats, then so much the better!

Canberra would not be impressed!

If the Australians had left it at just one intervention, then perhaps New Zealanders could simply have shrugged it off as yet another case of bad behaviour from the land of the under-arm bowlers. But when have the Aussies ever left it at “just one”?

Former guard’s ‘intervention’
The next intervention came in the form of “Ian” – formerly a guard (or so he said) at both the Nauru and Manus Island detention centres. For reasons it has yet to adequately explain, RNZ’s Checkpoint programme provided “Ian” with nearly ten, largely uninterrupted, minutes of air-time during which he poured-forth a stream of accusations and characterisations which, to put it mildly, painted the protesters occupying the decommissioned Manus Island facility in the most lurid and disquieting colours. The detainees were criminals, drug-dealers – paedophiles even! Not at all the sort of people New Zealanders would want in their country.

“Ian”, it turns out, is a “witness” well-known to the many Australian NGOs that have taken up the cause of the detainees on Manus and Nauru. They have noted the curious similarities between “Ian’s” supposedly personal observations and experiences, and the inflammatory talking-points constantly reiterated by Australia’s hard-line Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton. A cynic might describe the grim “testimony” of “Ian” and Dutton as mutually reinforcing.

No matter. New Zealand’s racist, Islamophobic and militantly anti-immigrant community had been supplied with yet another truckload of Australian-manufactured ammunition.

Enough? Not hardly! Only on Friday morning New Zealanders were fed the shocking “news” that the protesting Manus Island detainees are harbouring within their ranks an unspecified number of men guilty of having debauched and prostituted local girls as young as 10 and 13!

Too much? Over the top? Redolent of the very worst instances of the murderous racial-incitement for which the Deep South of the United States was so rightly infamous? It sure is! Which is why we must hope that the internet does not operate on Manus Island. Because, if the local inhabitants were to read on-line that the detainees were responsible for prostituting their daughters, what might they NOT do?

Disinformation campaign
One almost feels that the Australian spooks behind this extraordinary disinformation campaign would actually be delighted if the locals burned down the Manus Island detention centre with the protesting detainees inside it.

“This is what comes of 37-year-old Kiwi prime ministers meddling in matters they know nothing about!” That would be the consistent theme of the right-wing Australian media. It would not take long for the same line to be picked up here: first on social media, and then by more mainstream media outlets.

Right-wing outrage, mixed with a gleeful “we told you so!”, could not, however, be contained within the news media for very long. Inevitably, the more outré inhabitants of the Opposition’s back bench would take possession of the controversy, from there it would cascade down rapidly to Opposition politicians nearer the front.

Before her enemies could say: “It’s all your fault!”, Jacinda would find herself under withering political fire from both sides of the Tasman. Canberra would register her increasingly fragile government’s distress with grim satisfaction.

As the men and women responsible for organising “Operation Stardust” deleted its final folder, and fed the last incriminating document into the paper-shredder, one or two of them might even have voiced a judiciously muted “Mission Accomplished!”

This essay, by Chris Trotter, was originally posted on the Bowalley Road blog of Saturday, 18 November 2017, under the title: “Not quite an act of war: Analysing Australia’s push-back against Jacinda’s Manus Island outreach.  It is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the permission of the author.

• RNZ believed Manus Island staff but why should we?

OPINION: By Sharon Harvey and Sorowar Chowdhury

The plight of the Rohingya people has hit the international headlines again. Following the August clashes in Rakhine State between Myanmar police and army and an armed opposition group, Myanmar has seen an accelerated exodus of Rohingya people into Bangladesh.

There are estimated to be about one million Rohingya in Bangladesh with between 500,000 to 700,000 left in Myanmar. Moreover, since the late 1970s, 350,000 Rohingya have fled to Pakistan, 200,000 to Saudi Arabia and 150,000 to Malaysia to escape persecution.

Others are in Thailand and countries of resettlement such as New Zealand and Australia.

The most recent situation is so tragic that a recent Times Higher Education article called for some of the world’s top universities to cease educational partnerships in Myanmar until human rights abuses, especially towards the Rohingya people have ceased.

Rohingya are Muslims living in Northern Rakhine State (formerly Arakan) in Myanmar (formerly Burma) who constitute an ethnic, linguistic and religious minority. They were stripped of citizenship in 1982 and, subsequently, have been the victims of severe discrimination and persecution.

For the last few years, there has been evidence of Rohingya risking their lives and fleeing Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh and other countries. In August this year, with the insurgence of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, the Myanmar army began a “clearance operation”, characterised as “ethnic cleansing” by the United Nations, that lasted for several weeks.

Amnesty International published a report on October 18 claiming the Myanmar Army operation which involved “widespread and unlawful killing” including rape and other sexual violence and the burning of Rohingya villages, constituted “serious human rights violations” and “crimes against humanity”.

Tragic situation
The situation is tragic and needs urgent international attention.

The underlying problem for the Rohingya people is that Myanmar refuses to accept they are a recognisable ethnic minority and therefore citizens of Myanmar.

While scholars are divided over the Rohingya’s earliest settlement in Rakhine, the 2017 Advisory Commission on Rakhine State led by former United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan, maintained the Rohingya people are an integrated population of Muslims who have lived in Rakhine since at least the Kingdom of Mrauk U, the final Rakhine kingdom (1429-1775), and possibly 600 years earlier.

Others are 19th and 20th-century migrants from Bangladesh and West Bengal of India.

In any case, all Rohingya have been living in Rakhine state for at least several generations and many of them much, much longer. To put this into perspective, Rohingya have been living in Northern Rakhine in some cases perhaps before the Māori settlement of Aotearoa and at least as long as European settlement here.

Moreover, in light of the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights conventions relating to statelessness (Article 3) and reduction of statelessness (Article 1), the Rohingya people are entitled to citizenship, their human rights should be upheld, and they are entitled to non-discrimination.

Above all, in no way ought they or anyone else be the victims of ethnic cleansing.

From the UNHCR’s perspective, there are three durable solutions for refugees: repatriation, local integration, and resettlement.

Since Bangladesh is already hosting close to a million Rohingya and is a low-middle income country, it may not be feasible to integrate all the new Rohingya who have fled Rakhine state since August.

Repatriation very slow
As for repatriation, Bangladesh and Myanmar recently agreed to form a joint working group by the end of November. However, with current documentation issues outstanding for the Rohingya, repatriation could take a very long time.

In the meantime, global leaders, including from the United States, European Union, and UN Security Council, have expressed extreme concern over the Rohingya situation. International pressure on Myanmar needs to be reinforced to expedite the repatriation.

Regarding resettlement, although Bangladesh did not ratify the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol, it started a third-country resettlement programme in 2006 and this continued until the Bangladeshi government suspended it in November 2010.

However UNHCR, being the global refugee-resettling facilitator, may approach Bangladesh and mediate with refugee-resettling countries to open a special quota for the Rohingya and extend the opportunity to resettle them in third countries.

Because New Zealand is a refugee resettling country and some Rohingya have been successfully resettled here, New Zealand needs to urgently create provision for a special intake of Rohingya refugees, as it has done recently for the Syrian refugees.

The new government has the opportunity to demonstrate its credibility to the world by extending compassion to a community in deep crisis and thereby upholding Labour’s election slogan “Let’s do this”.

Associate Professor Sharon Harvey is head of the school of language and culture at Auckland University of Technology. Sorowar Chowdhury, a PhD student from Bangladesh, is researching the resettlement of Rohingya in New Zealand. This article has been republished by Asia Pacific Report with the permission of the authors and was originally published by The New Zealand Herald.

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

New Zealand journalist Yasmine Ryan, credited with being the first reporter writing in English about the Arab Spring from her base in Tunisia, has been farewelled at a funeral held in Auckland today, reports Stuff.

Ryan died in Turkey at the age of 35 after reportedly falling from the fifth storey of a friend’s apartment building in Istanbul on November 30.

Friends and family gathered at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Auckland to farewell the much-loved and respected journalist.

Yasmine’s mother, Deborah, spoke during the service of her daughter’s goodwill in the field of journalism.

“She believed in journalism, she believed in good journalism,” she said. “She did everything for women in journalism, did everything for everybody.

“She [Yasmine] died doing what she loved most.”

The freelancer previously worked for Al Jazeera when she was covering the Arab Spring, and was later a fellow of the World Press Institute visiting the United States in 2016.

International award
She won an International Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2010 for a story about Algerian boat migrants.

She also worked as an online producer and video journalist for the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, and in New Zealand with independent news agency Scoop.

She also contributed to Pacific Scoop and Pacific Journalism Review.

Friends and colleagues described her as a “selfless human” and “a fearless woman”.

Investigative journalist Selwyn Manning, who worked with Ryan at Scoop, said “the world is a better place because of her”.

He said: “It takes a lot to sink in. You see someone who has got such youth, zest and professionalism, who has so much to offer, and it is just a significant loss from so many angles,” he said.

Ryan was co-author with Manning and Katie Small of I Almost Forgot About the Moon, a book about the human rights campaign in support of Algerian asylum seeker Ahmed Zaoui and his family’s right to stay in New Zealand.

Theologian Zaoui was at the ecumenical funeral today where he said prayers in Arabic for Ryan.

Te Reo Māori and Hebrew prayers were also given at the funeral with Monsignor Bernard Kiely as celebrant.

A GiveALittle page set up by Jacinta Forde, who works at the University of Waikato with Ryan’s father, said her dad had “left on the first plane to Turkey … to bring her back home to New Zealand”.

• Tribute to a NZ media mentor

BRIEFING: By Erin Harris

The decision to terminate a long-standing arrangement that saw the Australian High Court act as a partial appellate court for Nauru, as reported last week, has heightened concerns about Nauru’s appropriateness as a venue for an Australian immigration detention centre.

The timing of the decision – 90 days’ notice of the termination was quietly given to the Australian Government on 13 December – appears to have been designed to block the avenue of appeal for 19 citizens (several former Nauruan MPs among them) charged over a 2015 protest outside the Parliament of Nauru.

However, it has also served to further erode the rights of hundreds of asylum seekers, including dozens of children, currently in Nauru.

The cancelled court arrangement had been in place since 1976, yet determined only 16 cases in total. Thirteen of those cases were heard in 2017, with 11 brought by asylum seekers disputing the refusal of refugee status.

Of those 11 cases, only one was dismissed. Eight were successful, and two were dropped due to refugee status being granted in the interim.

Nauru has declared it will set up its own court of appeal, but in the meantime asylum seekers are denied the basic legal right of appeal.

In response to the termination becoming public, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop declared:

Australia supports Nauru’s sovereignty and its December 2017 decision to terminate the treaty in advance of the nation’s 50th anniversary of independence.

Secretive nature
Australia is right to support Nauru’s assertion of sovereignty, and the removal of this somewhat awkward arrangement – an oddity the Australian Law Reform Commission recommended terminating in 2001.

But Australia also needs to question the secretive nature of the announcement, its politically motivated timing, and the fact that the termination took effect before an alternative appeals court could be established.

Several legal rulings and a Senate inquiry have determined that Australia has a duty of care in relation to the asylum seekers in our facilities, regardless of their location, and this development indicates a further blow to the rights of an already vulnerable population.

This shutdown of a legal avenue of appeal is not the only reason to question the ongoing appropriateness of Nauru as a site for Australia’s immigration detention centre.

In the past few months, a steady stream of cases have demonstrated Nauru’s lack of capacity to deal with the mounting number of health issues among asylum seekers held on the island.

Despite Australia’s claim that “healthcare in Nauru is the responsibility of the government of Nauru”, in reality, Nauru is unable to meet asylum seekers’ needs.

The Australian government’s own health contractor on the island has declared the hospital in Nauru to be unsafe for surgery, and Nauru has no permanent specialist child psychiatrists.

Suicide risk
In 2018 alone, there have been two cases (here and here) of juveniles at acute risk of suicide on Nauru being ordered by Australian courts to be transferred to Australia for treatment.

Taiwan has also been used as an alternative venue for surgical treatment not available in Nauru. Because Taiwan is not a UN member state, and therefore not party to the 1951 Refugee Convention, refugees transferred there cannot claim protection on their arrival.

A consideration of Australia’s duty of care in relation to the asylum seekers housed on Nauru begs the question of why Australia continues to doggedly prioritise the US resettlement deal to the exclusion of all other options?

This is particularly pertinent in light of President Donald Trump’s recent escalation of negativity towards immigrants and refugees, and the slow pace at which the US deal is unfolding.

UNHCR Director of the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific in Geneva, Indrika Ratwatte, recently urged the Australian government to reconsider the offer by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern made in November, and reaffirmed this week.

By doing so, Australia could quickly bring an end to the suffering of many of the detainees who remain on Nauru.

Ultimately, Australia needs to recognise that the asylum seekers on Nauru are its responsibility, and that Nauru’s declining ability to provide them with adequate care and basic rights is a problem that must be solved.

Erin Harris is a research associate at the Lowy Institute, where she works with both the Diplomacy and Public Opinion Programme and the Digital Program. Her research interests include gender, development and the Pacific. This article originally appeared on The Interpreter, published by the Lowy Institute and is republished with the permission of the author.

Refugees and asylum seekers on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island have suffered repeated violent attacks and robberies by locals, says Human Rights Watch. Video: HRW

Pacific Media Watch Newsdesk

Papua New Guinea has been condemned for violent mob attacks on people accused of sorcery – especially women or girls, repeated assaults and robberies on refugees, failure to address police brutality and corruption in the latest country report by Human Rights Watch.

The New York-based rights watchdog flagged a Madang trial that began in March of 122 people accused of killing five men and two children suspected of witchcraft and serial attacks on women.

Almost 40 percent of the country’s 8 million people live in poverty, and the government is far too reliant on religious groups and non-government organisations to provide charitable services for the economic and social rights of citizens.

Among other key points of the chapter in its annual world report:

• The government has not taken sufficient steps to address gender inequality, violence, excessive use of force by police;
• Rates of family and sexual violence are among the highest in the world, and perpetrators are rarely prosecuted; and
• Papua New Guinea has one of the highest rates of maternal death in the world.

‘Electoral violence’
Last August, Peter O’Neill was reelected as prime minister following an “election marred by widespread electoral irregularities and violence”, Human Rights Watch says.

“Soldiers and extra police were sent to the Highlands in response to fighting triggered by the election, where dozens of people, including police, had been killed in election-related violence.

“Refugees and asylum seekers on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island have suffered repeated violent attacks and robberies by locals, with inadequate hospital care on the island and no action by police.”

The watchdog says that more than three years after the 2013 Family Protection Act was adopted, Parliament in May finally passed regulations to implement the law, which criminalises domestic violence and allows victims to obtain protection orders.

However, police and prosecutors “rarely pursue investigations or criminal charges against people who commit family violence” — even in cases of attempted murder, serious injury, or repeated rape — and instead prefer to resolve such cases through mediation and/or payment of compensation.

Police often demand money (“for fuel”) from victims before acting, or simply ignore cases that occur in rural areas.

There is also a severe lack of services for people requiring assistance after having suffered family violence, such as safe houses, qualified counselors, case management, financial support, or legal aid, the report says.

Violent mobs
Violent mobs attacked individuals accused of sorcery or witchcraft, particularly women and girls.

In March, a trial involving 122 defendants began in Madang. The defendants were charged in connection with the killing of five men and two children suspected of sorcery in 2014, Human Rights Watch says.

The prosecution alleged that the men raided a village in search of sorcerers to kill, armed with “bush knives, bows and arrows, hunting spears, [and] home-made and factory-made shotguns.”

No further details were available at time of the watchdog’s report regarding the trial’s progress.

Papua New Guinea has one of the highest rates of maternal death in the world. Just over 50 percent of women and girls give birth in a health facility or with the help of a skilled birth attendant.

Although the PNG government supports universal access to contraception, two out of three women still cannot access contraception due to geographic, cultural, and economic barriers.

Abortion remains illegal in PNG, except when the mother’s life is at risk.

Police abuse rampant
Police abuse remained rampant in Papua New Guinea, says Human Rights Watch.

In May, police detained and assaulted a doctor at a police roadblock on his way home in Port Moresby. The case triggered a public outcry, but no one had been charged for the offence at time of writing.

Few police are ever held to account for beating or torturing criminal suspects, but in December 2016, a mobile squad commander was charged with the murder of a street vendor, six months after the alleged offence occurred.

A court granted him bail in January 2017. In September, police charged a former police officer with the 2013 murder of two people in Central Province.

Despite the ombudsman and police announcing investigations into the 2016 police shooting of eight university students during a protest in Port Moresby, at time of writing no police had been charged or disciplined and neither body had issued a report.

About 770 male asylum seekers and refugees from countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma, and Iran, live on Manus Island.

Another 35 or so have signed settlement papers to remain in PNG, although only four of these are working and financially independent.

Temporary living
About 70 are temporarily living in Port Moresby. All were forcibly transferred to PNG by Australia since 2013, says Human Rights Watch.

Australia pays for their upkeep but refuses to resettle them, insisting refugees must settle in PNG or third countries, such as the United States.

Refugees and asylum seekers do not feel safe on Manus due to a spate of violent attacks by locals in the town of Lorengau.

Local youths attacked refugees and asylum seekers with bush knives, sticks, and rocks and robbed them of mobile phones and possessions.

Police failed to hold perpetrators to account.

In April, soldiers fired shots at the main regional processing center, injuring nine people including refugees and center staff.

By Mong Palatino

Protests have been gathering force over the Nauru government ban on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) from entering the country to cover the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Summit in September.

Nauru accused ABC, which is Australia’s public broadcaster, of biased and false reporting.

The summit is an annual gathering of Oceania’s heads of state, where important matters concerning the region are addressed.

READ MORE: Nauru government’s move against press freedom ‘disgraceful’

On July 2, 2018, the Nauru government issued a statement restricting the number of people who can attend the summit because of “very limited accommodation.” But it singled out ABC and explained why it banned the broadcaster:

…no representative from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation will be granted a visa to enter Nauru under any circumstances, due to this organisation’s blatant interference in Nauru’s domestic politics prior to the 2016 election, harassment of and lack of respect towards our President in Australia, false and defamatory allegations against members of our Government, and continued biased and false reporting about our country. It is our right, as it is the right of every nation, to choose who is allowed to enter.

ABC aired a documentary in 2016 alleging torture and child abuse linked to Australian government’s offshore asylum-seeker processing centers, which are managed by Nauru. It also published a report which alleged that Nauru’s president and some of his ministers received bribery from an Australian phosphate dealer.

Nauru condemned both reports as “racist” and “biased political propaganda”.

The small island nation was a mining site for several decades until phosphate deposits were exhausted in the 1980s. It received aid from Australia and hosted an Australian immigration detention facility.

ABC news director Gaven Morris criticised the decision of Nauru:

The Nauruan Government should not be allowed to dictate who fills the positions in an Australian media pool.

It can hardly claim it is “welcoming the media” if it dictates who that media will be and bans Australia’s public broadcaster.

The Nauru government quickly responded by describing the ABC statement as “arrogant, disrespectful and a further example of the sense of entitlement shown by this activist media organisation.” It added:

We remind the ABC that we – like Australia – have every right to refuse a visa to any person or organisation that we believe is not of good character, and that entry into our country is a privilege not a right. The Australian media do not decide who enters Nauru.

Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said Nauru’s decision was “regrettable” but refused to intervene on behalf of ABC.

The Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, an Australian network of media workers, said the government should pursue the issue with Nauru officials:

This is an attack on press freedom that our government needs to condemn in the strongest possible terms. Recognising the sovereignty of another nation does not extend to accepting they have the right to prevent free and open reporting.

Australia’s Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery threatened to boycott the event in Nauru:

If the ban is not reversed, the media pool will be disbanded. If one cannot go, none will go.

We oppose the Nauru edict because it is wrong in this instance and because it sets a dangerous precedent. What other Australians might be banned from a similar group by another government in future? We stand for a free press, not a banned one.

Red Ink of Australia’s Nine Network expressed support to ABC:

ABC is our competitor, and a tough one at that, but there is something bigger at stake here than beating a rival.

The ABC ban was also denounced by other media groups in the region. The New Zealand Parliamentary Press Gallery said:

This decision follows already restrictive conditions, limiting the number of journalists who can attend this important regional summit. While infrastructure constrains play a role in limited pooling numbers, we are appalled by this attempt to control media coverage.

Dan McGarry, the media director of Vanuatu Daily Post, explained why the newspaper will not be sending a delegate to Nauru in September:

I instructed the Daily Post’s editor to withdraw our reporter from the Vanuatu media delegation allotted to covering this event.

This isn’t a self-righteous, moralising action. It’s a survival tactic. If we allow ourselves to get into a situation where our ability to report is predicated on how positive our coverage is, then we can’t do our job.

Pacific Island News Association urged Nauru to reconsider its decision to promote media diversity:

The Pacific is on display and can be proud of its media diversity and efforts to strengthen our communities through dialogue and communication.

The International Federation of Journalists said Nauru had set a dangerous precedent:

Governments, leaders and politicians must remember the role of the media, and not use their powers to control and stifle press freedom. The Nauru government is setting a dangerous precedent by barring ABC journalists’ from covering the Pacific Island Forum.

The September event hosted by Nauru is the 49th Pacific Islands Forum.

Pacific Media Watch reports that the New Zealand-based Pacific Media Centre condemned the selective ban by the Nauru government in what it said was an authoritarian affront to media freedom in the region.

Director Professor David Robie, who also criticised Australian hypocrisy over Pacific media freedom, said:

Clearly the Nauru government is determined to gag any independent efforts to speak truth to power …

This is shocking and painfully obvious that Australia has much to hide in the region just like the Nauru government.

Nauru is unranked in the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index. However, the Nauru ban was criticised at an RSF Asia-Pacific media freedom summit in Paris last week.

Mong Palatino is an activist contributor to Global Voices and a two-term congressman in the Philippine House of Representatives. He blogs at Mongster’s Nest. This article is republished from Global Voices under a Creative Commons licence.

When the host country Nauru banned the pool broadcaster, ABC, from the Pacific Islands summit set for next month, it was condemned widely for an attack on freedom on the media. Lee Duffield recently paid a visit to Dan McGarry, media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post, who took a lead, declaring his outlet would no longer go.

The Vanuatu-based journalist who pulled the plug on the Nauru government for interfering with media freedom was having a typical full day at the office and elsewhere around Port Vila.

Time was being taken up by the major event for his newspaper’s market, of a Chinese goodwill ship in port giving out free health care to thousands of citizens and a revival of trouble over the earthquake on Ambae Island.

He had joined the Prime Minister, Charlot Salwai, on board the hospital ship, Peace Ark, together with a Chinese Rear-Admiral, Guan Bailin, recognising the visit as both a community happening and another part of China’s highly active influence-building.

On Ambae, where thousands have had to be evacuated since the earthquake and volcanic eruption a year ago, talk of a need for fresh evacuations was being matched with criticism of government relief efforts by the Opposition.

Day in the life
Dan McGarry characterised this as a day in the life of a Pacific Islands journalist, something like the experience of a country journalist in Australia, where the audience, contacts, critics and personal friends are the same people.

“Except that there are different cultures and you are reporting on national affairs.”

Life is tough enough for many people in the small island states – or “big ocean” states, as some like to say – with limited development and economic opportunity.

Add in the deeds of political leaders across the region partial to power without much responsibility, standing on their dignity, adverse to free circulation of information and life gets more difficult for all — especially the small number of media professionals trying to get out essential truths.

Pulling the plug
Awareness of getting out the truth on government interference promoted McGarry’s decision early in July to cancel his media outlet’s participation in the coming Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru.

The Nauru government had announced its ban on a media pool for the summit during 1-9 September, because the joint broadcaster for the group was the Australian ABC.

It said the broadcaster was biased against it; its coverage of a Nauru election had come to interference in domestic politics and it had given the island’s President some tough scrutiny – “harassment” – evidently over issues linked to the asylum seeker camps there.

The ban was condemned by several Australian and Pacific media groups, including the Media and Entertainment Arts Alliance (MEAA) and the Pacific Media Centre, the Canberra Press Gallery has had to consider a boycott on going, but News Corp broke ranks, citing its own dislike of the ABC.

Getting advice
In Port Vila, Dan McGarry was hearing advice from esteemed colleagues in his region that getting information was paramount, so never do a comprehensive boycott of an event.

McGarry’s response was defiant:

“That would apply with the Australian gallery together. But for outside media to take a position might have some additional effect. The Pacific Forum had been questionable to begin with. At the last Forum, in Samoa late last year, media access was severely restricted on any substantial stuff.

“Climate change was really the only issue, where the Pacific nations at the Paris Climate Change meeting had all wanted a standard of 1.5 degrees maximum warming, but this time failed to produce any consensus, not even a position statement.

“Considering media freedoms in the Pacific, it is not so bad here in Vanuatu. In other places, not so much. In Papua New Guinea they are compliant with government, a lot of information they are just not publishing, the Fiji Times is facing an existential threat and Nauru is a black hole.”

Thanks to the ABC
He also acknowledged the strategic role that has been played by the ABC and Radio Australia in preserving and getting out news.

“For following democratic norms, the ABC is one of our firm allies in the Pacific. Without such a strong relationship we would not have any kind of regional news to speak of. We have relied on them to get out stories that we cannot safely publish, as in the past with physical attacks on our own publisher.”

(Marc Neil-Jones who, after several incidents in 2009 with editor Royson Willie, was assaulted after publishing on scandals in the prisons system.)

“We could rely on them in a political crisis. It would help to have an ABC reporter in the room, and similarly they would not face political reprisals. We need them as they need us and I am on Australian radio on a fairly frequent basis.”

He said there was some hope the Nauru government might be getting prevailed upon to quietly change its position, by other governments.

“They might be able to bring them back; it would be in the ‘Pacific way’.”

Profile
Dan McGarry, from a family that had recently migrated to Canada from Ireland, arrived in Vanuatu in 2003 as a technology specialist with non-government organisations working on development.

As chief technologist with the Pacific Institute of Public Policy, he had worked on capacity building projects and civil society.

“It was assisting lawmakers in prioritising, visualising and making open processes, for budgets, fisheries or health care”, and three years ago, “with a reputation for neutrality”, was appointed media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post group.

With the practice of “ear to the ground” journalism, he lists developments in a range of fields where information builds up, not always ready for publication.

Comments
Some comments:

On competition for influence between China and the “West”:
• Australia was “back in the infrastructure game”, after stepping back from development aid commitments, following the report of a Chinese naval base for Vanuatu.

• On that, he’d published criticism of the late awakening in Australia over the military base story, with commentators there dismissing repeated denials — signs of general disinterest in South Pacific business:

“The average Australian’s conception of Pacific island nations is so limited it makes some of us wonder if they even want to understand. Our voices – and our reality – have been pointedly and repeatedly ignored in the media and in the corridors of power.”

• Australia’s main undertaking, a A$40 million road-building project for the Port Vila city area, had been close to a “high profile debacle”; set back by cyclone damage and other delays, it had lost some 20 pe cent of its nominal value through currency fluctuations, and he believed had been slowed by contractors lacking experience in developing countries.

• Australia had overcome competition to secure a telecommunications equipment upgrade for the country.

• China had been running an expansionary programme, “but they do not always get what they want.”

On corruption:
• All contracts and tenders came under scrutiny, but news sources tended to agree the overall level of corruption had declined.

“Sometimes when decisions are made that you cannot understand, you think that would be something that could explain it.”

• Even with the roads projects, there had to be “murmurings”, but no source had information leading to publication.

• China’s problem for this year would be with the large numbers of its citizens lining up to buy Vanuatu passports through a system of agencies. Mainly useful for evading travel restrictions placed on Chinese passports in several countries, these had been selling for sometimes $A155,000.

• He has made a graphic depicting exponential growth in the passports revenue trade pushing to more than $90 million a year, bringing massive impacts on the small economy if it develops.

On the independence referendum in New Caledonia:

• While the Melanesian countries including Vanuatu were supporting a “Yes” vote in the poll this November, the Kanak independence movement, the FLNKS, did not look to be pressing hard enough for fresh backing.

“There is a bit of national empathy with the three Melanesian independence movements that are active – Bougainville, West Papua and New Caledonia – but not a lot of advocacy here. My impression is there is some indifference among many in the New Caledonia movement, compared to the movement from West Papua, who see a need to be out there and see the media as allies.”

• He said New Caledonia was appearing in regular regional news, such as reports on police actions in demonstrations, and there were signs of some capital being moved out, as with a Vanuatu company obtaining $A5 million dollars from the French territory for financial restructuring.

On stable government and politics in Vanuatu:
• While the government had kept together and weathered no-confidence motions, in the country’s multi-party system it would have to work on taking that through to elections in 2020.

• Already one opposition group had been working systematically to build up a financial base for a strong election campaign. The Foreign Minister, Ralph Regenvanu, with his new Land and Justice Party, had made gains and would be considering it was his time. The incumbent Prime Minister, Charlot Salwai, was a quiet performer, but had so far managed to unite divided French speakers to build a political base.

Political journalist and academic Dr Lee Duffield is an editorial board member of Pacific Journalism Review and a research associate of the Pacific Media Centre. This article was first published by the Australian Independent and is republished by Asia Pacific Report with the permission of the author.

By Benjamin Robinson-Drawbridge of RNZ Pacific

The oldest refugee camp on Nauru is being demolished to hide abusive conditions from the Pacific Islands Forum, an advocate says.

Regional Processing Centre Three (RPC3) most recently housed about 130 people in mould-infested tents thought to have cause widespread respiratory and skin infections.

Refugee advocate Ian Rintoul said the camp contained families, including children and single women who had recently petitioned the Australia Border Force to move them to better accommodation.

LISTEN:  The full interview with Ian Rintoul on Dateline Pacific

They were told earlier this month they would not be moved but were now being taken to vacant units and a new refugee area on the island, Rintoul said.

“They were the same tents that were put up in 2013,” he said.

“They’ve held the most vulnerable people in the worst possible conditions in this camp for the past five years.

“To say it’s riddled with mould is an understatement. The tents, because of the environment on Nauru, they’re covered in mould and there’s been substantial medical evidence that the mould may well be one of the things, along with the phosphate, that has caused respiratory problems and skin fungal infections which is an epidemic on Nauru.”

Medical problems
In 2014, microbiologist Dr Cameron Jones was hired to analyse the mould which had reportedly caused medical problems for at least a dozen former staff.

Dr Jones said as well as the staff quarters, refugee tents were covered in mould along with something call black yeast.

“The black yeast infections are an emerging worldwide health threat,” Dr Jones said.

Adult onset asthma and cognitive impairment were among conditions those exposed to the mould could develop, he said.

“Certainly inner ear infections, I noted multiple samples of inner ear drops in some of the asylum seeker tents.

“I would imagine that there are numerous health problems and I can only imagine this is why I was not allowed to talk to any members of the medical staff,” Dr Jones said.

Deliberate attempt
The hasty decision to remove RPC3 was a deliberate attempt to hide the worst refugee facility from visiting dignitaries and journalists, Rintoul said.

“I think it’s quite clear when you see the context of what’s happening on Nauru, the Nauruan government and the Australian Border Force are desperate to try and present a better image of Nauru to the Pacific Islands Forum which starts on September 1,” he said.

With a refugee service centre temporarily being moved away from where the forum was to be held, Rintoul said it seemed that rumoured “security zones” were being set up on the island.

“Whether that will prevent media or dignitaries leaving the security zone, we’re not sure but it will certainly prevent refugees approaching those zones,” he said.

Although the camp’s removal was good news for refugee health, Rintoul agreed the timing of the demolition was cynical.

“It’s clearly not a humanitarian gesture. They could have done this a long time ago. There is simply no doubt they are trying to dress Nauru up.”

Benjamin Robinson-Drawbridge is a journalist with RNZ Pacific. This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

By RNZ Pacific

New Zealand journalist Barbara Dreaver has been detained by authorities in Nauru while covering the Pacific Islands Forum summit, reports Television New Zealand.

TVNZ said Dreaver was conducting an interview with a refugee when detained by police early this afternoon.

READ MORE: TVNZ reporter released after being held 4 hours

An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade was with Dreaver but TVNZ reported that it was unsure of her whereabouts.

The Nauru government had limited the journalists covering the summit and placed restrictions on those who got approval to go, limiting who they could talk to and what issues they could discuss.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) was also banned from covering the Forum summit after the Nauruan government accused the public broadcaster of “continued biased and false reporting” about the country.

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

By RNZ Pacific

The Nauru government has taken to Twitter to warn journalists they are not above the law as they cover the Pacific Islands Forum.

Journalists covering the Forum are operating on visas with restrictions on reporting – in particular about the Australian-run detention camps.

New Zealand Television Pacific affairs journalist Barbara Dreaver lost her accreditation yesterday after Nauru said she had violated visa regulations.

READ MORE: Media freedom commentators condemn Nauru ‘gag’ actions

The TVNZ reporter was detained for more than three hours and stripped of her Forum accreditation – however that was reinstated today.

She had been interviewing a refugee outside a restaurant on the island when she was asked to go to a police station.

The Nauru government said journalists from New Zealand were not above the law and walking into certain areas unannounced increased risk.

The government also tweeted about the need for journalists to follow the rules, and accused some of reporting misinformation.

News reports disputed
At a news conference as part of the Forum President, Baron Waqa disputed news reports about what happened to Dreaver.

“No she wasn’t detained, she was taken in for questioning,” he said.

New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters, who is also in Nauru, said freedom of the press was critical to democracy.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern arrived earlier for the main day of the Forum and said she would be asking more questions about what happened during the course of the day.

She is joining other leaders in the traditional retreat, after which they will sign the Boe Declaration, making commitments about action on regional security, including transnational crime, illegal fishing and cybercrime.

RNZ political reporter Gia Garrick said journalists there did get a warning of sorts yesterday.

‘Wrong issues’
“We did have a warning. I guess that there was some displeasure or unrest from the Nauru government about the New Zealand reporting while we are here,” said Gia Garrick.

“We had an MFAT official sit the seven of us down, or actually it was the six of us minus Barbara [Dreaver], she wasn’t back at this stage …and tell us that the Nauru government would like to pass on a message to us that it would prefer if we reported on the Forum instead of just focusing on the one issue here.

“The government felt that we had not been reporting on the Forum to its satisfaction and been focusing on the wrong issues and so he wanted to pass on that it would be going against our visa conditions should we be going into these refugee camps and it was just a few hours later that Barbara Dreaver was detained or was taken to the police station.”

The Pacific Islands Forum ends today.

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.

By RNZ Pacific

A legal advocacy group has told the UN Human Rights Council that more than 100 asylum seeker and refugee children are living without hope on Nauru.

The Human Rights Law Centre addressed the latest council session in Geneva.

The centre’s Daniel Webb told the council that despite the fact the Australian government was professing its committment to human rights in Geneva, it continued to indefinitely imprison 102 children in its offshore detention centre on Nauru.

“Imprisoned for fleeing the same atrocities our government comes here and condemns. And after five years of detention, these children have now lost hope.

“Some have stopped speaking. Some have stopped eating. A 10-year-old boy recently tried to kill himself.”

Webb said if the detention was not stopped there would be deaths.

He said even the government’s own medical advisers were warning that the situation was untenable.

“Yet the Australian government still refuses to free these kids, and is fighting case after case in our Federal Court to deny them access to urgent medical care. Mr President, we are talking about 102 children.”

Australia presented their concerns regarding human rights around the world at the same session but did not mention their detention camps on Nauru or Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island.

This article is republished under the Pacific Media Centre’s content partnership with Radio New Zealand.