On the Rotary rounds ... Taveuni , the garden island of Fiji

Bouma school kids singing in the rain. Below: Alan fishing - "it all helps"; Claire with the fishing family. Photos: Alan Eyes

CAFÉ PACIFIC publisher’s sister Claire and her husband, Alan Eyes, currently governor of Rotary District 9920 with a responsibility for the Pacific islands, are currently on a field trip to Fiji looking over a number of school and water aid projects. The trip has been a welcome eye opener. And they are now enthusiasts of the “Pacific Way”.

Some brief snippets from her diary:

August 24:
Bula, bula

We’re surviving the busy schedule … just! What an experience. We have been treated like royalty at the special water for life opening ceremonies and can now sit crossed-legged for almost an hour on the ceremonial mats … Have now downed many bilos of kava and been clapped by the elders. Cutting the ribbons and turning on the water taps in the villages is amazingly moving.

We met Sitiveni Sitivatu's mum in her village yesterday, and saw all that he has done for her. All Black No 11? But we see in the newspaper headlines today that he’s been left out of the World Cup team. She will be so disappointed.

Ni sa bula vinaka

PS: David, I met one of your ex-journalism students from USP - Emily Moli. She is a journalist still over here and has just joined the Suva Peninsula Rotary club. She says hi to you.

August 15:
The day starts sitting on Geoff’s covered outdoor deck under a coconut palm and looking out to the sea. Raining here in paradise this morning - a commodity needed to fill all those water tanks on the Rotary projects that Geoff is constantly finding funds for.

Also a cooling for the humid temperatures, so good for the group of us being shown the sights of Taveuni. Geoff is an inspiration and even at breakfast, provided for us by Joey, he is promoting Rotary and its projects as he maps out our morning.

We have been instructed that we will leave at 0815 sharp as we have a lot to see. The programme is very “light” today, Geoff says. We all bundle into his Toyota Prado, Joey, Alex Oehlmann, (an ambassadorial scholar from Germany currently studying in Auckland, and hosted by Auckland East Rotary Club), Alan and me, with Geoff driving.

Then we stop at the TovuTovu Resort, to pick up Ken and Angela who are over from Melbourne - Rotary club of Templestowe - promoting the ABCD -Art programme for schools. This Rotary initiative may join with Fiji clubs to create sponsorship for disadvantaged children to assist with education costs through this programme.

Off we set south, past Taveuni Airport, which is very close to where Geoff and Joey live. Then past “Tromoto” Restaurant on a cliff overhanging the sea where we shared a beautiful meal together on our first night. We pass first the Marist Training Centre/Waica Water Project which is currently under construction. Gradually the villages of Taveuni are being supplied with piped running water, a commodity we all take for granted. All these projects on Taveuni are possible thanks to Rotary clubs' financial and physical support, and the Rotary Foundation.
…
Next we head up the winding bumpy dirt track to the Buculevu Secondary School perched up on a hill and also overlooking the sea and surrounded by palm trees and gorgeous brightly coloured foliage. Here we view a working project with local village men learning on the job building skills overseen by Geoff … The Buculevu 40 bed girls dormitory will enable students from the final two years of schooling to have some more space and privacy.

Currently 140 female boarding students are housed in two small accommodation houses. We are privileged to view the dormitory which is nearing completion. Alex had contributed some time and energy painting the wall of the laundry area yesterday. Many local volunteers are also giving their time.

…
And still there is so much work to do on Taveuni …

PS: Later in the day, Alex and Alan were being taught how to fish from the beach with a Taveuni woman and her three sons. She couldn’t understand much English but when we mentioned Rotary, her eyes lit up. She beamed at us and said: “Rotary has done so much for us here."

All Pacific power to you, Claire and Alan.

Café Pacific's New Year Honours list 2010

NEWSPAPER of the Year – The Fiji Times: This is the second year running it has won the Café Pacific newspaper prize. Although The Fiji Times went off the boil under Netani Rika’s leadership and headed for a disastrous demise with it uncomprising but unrealistic stance when dealing with a military regime, the newspaper wins the award again - this time for its change of ownership, change of tactics and a realistic overhaul of its strategic direction. Under the naïve management in the last stages of the News Ltd era, the 141-year-old newspaper was heading for closure under the 10 percent local ownership ultimatum under the regime’s Media Industry Development Decree. This fate would have sealed the end of any credible fightback for an independent media in Fiji.

However, under the new ownership of the Motibhai group (“Mac” Motibhai Patel was a Fiji Times director for about four decades) and with the recall of a previous outstanding Australian publisher, Dallas Swinstead, to the hotseat, the paper now has the chance to fight another day. Neogotiation rather than confrontation seems to be the new approach under editor Fred Wesley. Time will tell whether this succeeds.

But paradoxically The Fiji Times also blots its copy book with the Most Toadying Story of the Year – a front page story on Fiji Water that ran as a sort of advertising wrap around given the marketing image displayed. When the US-based company Fiji Water announced its closure this was a petulant response to a massive tax clampdown on the company, many breathed an “about time” sigh – they regarded the company as having exploiting Fiji for years. While some in the media fraternity expected the regime to cave in – as it had done on a previous attempt to boost the state tax returns - this time it was the company that surrendered with a reversal of its close down edict and a vow of business as usual. The Fiji Times needed to have published a more exhaustive inquiry into the economics of Fiji Water and also ought to have a higher level of scrutiny of other foreign-owned companies operating in the country. This is revelatory about the level of business journalism on the paper at the moment.

Media film – There Once Was an Island: Te Henua e Noho: Strictly speaking, this isn’t a media film at all, but a powerful and heart-rending documentary about the realities of climate change in the Pacific, a film that every journalist working on environmental issues should watch. It is extremely educational about the power relationships between politicians in far-away Pacific capitals and their incompetent functionaries and island communities struggling for survival on remote islands with the political odds stacked against them. Filmmaker Briar March lived with the community on the Polynesian atoll of Takuu (also known as the Mortlock islands) as they wrestled with their life-and-death decisions over a move to the Bougainville autonomous region mainland some 250 km to the south-west.

This film had its premier in the New Zealand International Film Festival in July and was also screened at the Oceans, Islands and Skies creativity and climate change conference at the University of the South Pacific in September. Sadly, not one local Fiji journalist took the trouble of seeing it, let alone write about it. It has already won four awards in 2010 and was the runner-up as the best political film for the AOF Festival 2010.

Media monitoring agency – Reporters sans frontières (RSF): Again, this award is well-deserved globally for 2010, but the agency is also now boosting its Asia-Pacific coverage with several new nations now being included in its Pacific section of the annual media freedom survey. Its coverage of East Timor and Papua New Guinea is particularly welcome. According to RSF's 2010 end-of-year report:

57 journalists killed (25 percent fewer than in 2009)
51 journalists kidnapped
535 journalists arrested
1374 physically attacked or threatened
504 media censored
127 journalists fled their country
152 bloggers and netizens arrested
52 physically attacked
62 countries affected by internet censorship
Check out the full report.

Independent new website - Taimi Media Network Online: This new website is a hybrid offering from both the feisty independent newspaper Taimi ‘o Tonga and the government-owned Tonga Chronicle and TMN-Television 2. Congratulations Kalafi Moala and his team. This could not be better timed as the momentous post-election changes are settling down in Tonga. Scrutiny is needed now more than ever.

Also, a special mention of the Pacific Media Centre’s new revamped regional website: www.pmc.aut.ac.nz – unlike some of the regional media websites, this is genuinely independent and carries no vested interests baggage.

• Last year's Café Pacific New Year awards

MoJo slams eco-chic branding of Fiji's 'junta water'

FIJI WATER has come out with a spluttering response to Mother Jones’ investigative story condemning the South Pacific “pure water” company as creating a marketing illusion in the United States that is far from reality. In a nutshell, freelancer Anna Lenzer’s story given splash cover treatment by the magazine proclaims “the spin” as “pure”, “fancied by celebs (including President Obama)”, “every drop is green”. “untouched by man” and “living water” is flawed.

The “facts”, claims MoJo, are that Fiji Water produces “twice the plastic”, puts “lipstick on the junta”, is “diesel-powered”, “hides its profits in tax havens” and “locals drink dirty water”.

Lenzer’s article, "Fiji water: Spin the bottle", proclaims: Obama sips it. Paris Hilton loves it. Mary J. Blige won't sing without it. How did a plastic water bottle, imported from a military dictatorship thousands of miles away, become the epitome of cool?

The article has riled executives of Fiji Water, a company that reputedly employs 350 people in a rural part of the Pacific country. Company spokesman Rob Six replied on MoJo’s Fiji Green Blog:

We strongly disagree with the author’s premise that because we are in business in Fiji somehow that legitimises a military dictatorship. We bought Fiji Water in November 2004, when Fiji was governed by a democratically elected government. We cannot and will not speak for the government, but we will not back down from our commitment to the people, development, and communities of Fiji.

We consider Fiji our home and as such, we have dramatically increased our investment and resources over the past five years to play a valuable role in the advancement of Fiji.

It is true that Fiji is a poor country, but we believe that the private sector has a critical role to play to address the under served areas of Fiji’s development, with special attention to economic opportunities, health, education, water and sanitation.

MoJo co-editor Clara Jeffery replied through comments by Lenzer, saying Six didn’t respond to key questions raised in the MoJo article: from the polluting background of Fiji Water’s owners past and present, to the company’s decision to funnel assets through tax havens, to its silence on the alleged human rights abuses of the Fijian government. Lenzer's piece "doesn’t argue that Fiji Water actively props up the regime, but that its silence amounts to acquiescence. In contrast to the progressive image projected by the company in the US":

The regime clearly benefits from the company's global branding campaign characterising Fiji as a "paradise" where there is "no word for stress." Fiji's tourism agencies use Fiji Water as props in their promotional campaigns, and the company itself has publicised pictures of President Obama drinking Fiji Water. This is a point repeatedly made by international observers, including a UN official who in a recent commentary (titled "Why Obama should stop drinking Fiji water”) called for sanctions on Fiji, and singled out Fiji Water as the one company with enough leverage to force the junta to budge.

Yet the most pointed criticism the company has made of the regime was when it opposed a tax as "draconian;" it has never used language like that to refer to the junta's human rights abuses.

It’s worth remembering that there aren’t very many countries ruled by military juntas today, and Americans prefer not to do business with those that are. We don't import Burma Water or Libya Water.

Lenzer herself pointed out:

I did contact Fiji Water before my trip, and [Rob] Six mentioned that the company "takes journalists to Fiji"; I didn't follow up about joining such a junket. Despite news reports showing that Fiji wouldn’t cooperate with journalists who went there independently, I chose to do so and visited the factory on a public tour. I had planned to speak to Fiji Water’s local representatives, and to visit the surrounding villages, afterward. But it was at that point that I was arrested by Fijian police, interrogated about my plans to write about Fiji Water, and threatened with imprisonment and rape.

After that incident, personnel at the US Embassy strongly encouraged me not to visit the villages. I did discuss my trip to the islands with Six after I returned, and had extensive correspondence with him on numerous questions, many of which he has not addressed to this day, including:

- Why won't the company disclose the total amount of money that Fiji Water spends on its charity work? Do its charitable contributions come close to matching the 30 percent corporate tax rate it would be paying had it not been granted a tax holiday in Fiji since 1995?

- Will Fiji Water owners Lynda and Stewart Resnick, who in the company’s PR materials contrast our tap water supply with the “living water” found in their bottles, disclose the full volume of pesticides that their farming and flower companies use every year? Could limiting those inputs create better water here at home?

- Fiji touts its commitments to lighten its plastic bottle (which is twice as heavy as many competitors’) by 20 percent next year, to offset its carbon emissions by 120 percent, and to restore environmentally sensitive areas in Fiji, but its public statements never acknowledge that these projects are, in many cases, still on the drawing board or in the negotiating stages. Why?

Picture: Fiji Water reportedly became the first bottled water company to publish its carbon footprint in 2007. But is a bottle of Fiji Water truly green? Photo: Inhabit.

Meanwhile, it's good to see a despatch posted at Pacific Media Centre from AUT postgrad journalist Keira Stephenson, who is on internship with the Philippine Star, about Manila communities' daily struggle for water.

• Fiji water: Spin the bottle - by Anna Lenzer
• Fiji Water's reply on Fiji Green blog
• MoJo's full reply on Fiji Green blog
• Manila families tackle water woes - by Keira Stephenson