Former military chief warns PNG soldiers could be ‘outgunned’ in Mendi strife

Deadly MAG 58 Model 60-20 machine guns mounted on a cabin-top truck in the Southern Highlands.
Image: PNGAttitude

From Asia Pacific Report
A FORMER Papua New Guinea military commander has warned that he is “concerned, if not frightened” that the PNG Defence Force may be deploying police and soldiers in the troubled Southern Highlands province facing a deadly weapon.

Ex-Brigadier-General Jerry Singirok , a former commander of the PNGDF who arrested mercenaries deployed by the Sir Julius Chan government for the Bougainville war in the so-called Sandline crisis in 1997, has made his views known in independent media.

In an item published by PNG Attitude and EMTV journalist Scott Waide’s blog, Singirok described Prime Minister Peter O’Neill’s government response to last week’s Mendi riots as a “premature state of emergency” and a “cheap, reckless and knee-jerk option”.

His comments have come at a time when the nation has been shocked by the display of high powered assault weapons by protesters since last week’s Mendi rioting.

It is clear that the government’s guns amnesty last year did little to encourage people to surrender their weapons, reports Loop PNG.

Chinese 'baseless rumour', Nauru 'justice' for refugees and Fiji diabetes

David Robie talks on 95bFM about current Pacific issues

Reuben McLaren of 95bFM talks to Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology, on the centre's Southern Cross radio programme.

David speaks about various upheavals around the Pacific, including the alleged Chinese military "base plans" for Vanuatu, Nauru abolishing its Appeal Court in Australia, and a huge diabetes health bill blowout in Fiji.

• Stories at Asia Pacific Report
• 95bFM link: www.95bfm.com
• PMC's Southern Cross radio programme

One Palestinian family’s devastating story of Israeli military cruelty

Israel arrests 16-year-old Palestinian girl Ahed Tamimi in a night raid in the occupied West Bank. Video: Al Jazeera

COMMENT: By Sister Barbara Cameron

When I read last week of the detention of a young Palestinian teenage girl, 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi, dragged from her bed in the middle of the night by Israeli soldiers, for me it wasn’t just another Palestinian teenage protester.

I was devastated. This is the beautiful young woman I’d met as a happy, innocent 10-year-old, in whose house I’d slept, with whose family I’d sat at table, to whose grandmother I had listened as she shared the pain of the terrible things her own children had suffered at the hands of the Israeli military, her daughter shot in a military court room, her son detained innumerable times.

I was gutted thinking of this family having to deal with yet another trauma, fearing what might happen to their 16-year-old daughter in military detention.

READ MORE: Why is the West praising Malala but ignoring Ahed?

Ahed with her mother Nariman ... a family suffering
again from the cruelty and injustice of the Israeli
occupation. Image: Al Jazeera

Not only that but her 15-year-old brother, Mohammed, is now lying in an induced coma as the result of the injury caused by being shot in the face by a rubber bullet. For me it was heartbreaking news.

In 2011, as a NZ Catholic nun, a Mission Sister, I had volunteered with the International Women’s Peace Service group in Palestine on the West Bank, a group that supports the Palestinians in any nonviolent resistance to the occupation of their land by Israel, and reports on human rights abuses.

LIVE: CAFCA’s Murray Horton on NZ independence and foreign policy

Graphic: Concept art for Planet of the Apes

Courtesy of the Pacific Media Centre and Asia Pacific Report
 
TIME FOR INDEPENDENCE FROM A CRUMBLING US EMPIRE - Murray Horton
The advent of President Donald Trump in the US provides an unprecedented opportunity to take a good, hard look at Aotearoa's place in the world.  And to ask the question - why are we still a loyal member of the American Empire?

As the old saying goes, you are judged by the company you keep.

CAFCA Murray Horton says it's time for this country to pull the plug, to finish the business started in the 1980s, which saw us out of ANZUS, and break the chains -- military, intelligence, economic and cultural -- that continue to bind us to the American Empire.

Speaker: Murray Horton, national organiser of the Christchurch-based Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA). Video in two parts.

• More information
• ‘Despicable’ Youi wins Roger Award for ‘worst transnational’ in NZ

Bloody aftermath of Paniai massacre in West Papua captured on video

The four-minute video, shot by citizen journalists and released publicly for the first time today, includes first-hand testimony from survivors of the Paniai massacre in West Papua and graphic footage taken in the immediate aftermath. Video: Minority Rights Group International

NEW VIDEO footage showing the bloody aftermath of the Paniai massacre in West Papua highlights the urgent need for Indonesia to hold an independent and transparent investigation into the tragedy, says Minority Rights Group International (MRG).

A still from the MRG video.

In December 2014 four unarmed Papuan teenagers were killed and 17 more Papuans were injured when the Indonesian army and police opened fire on a group of peaceful protesters in Paniai.

They had gathered to protest an earlier incident of violence by the Indonesian security forces.

The four-minute video, shot by citizen journalists and released publicly for the first time today, includes first-hand testimony from survivors of the massacre as well as graphic footage taken in the immediate aftermath.

"This film gives a disturbing insight into the Indonesian military’s casual disregard for the lives of Indigenous Papuans,’ said TAPOL's Esther Cann.

Fiji in from the cold - and courted for the asylum seekers ‘Pacific Solution’

THE AUSTRALIAN yesterday featured an “historic come-in-from-the-cold” meeting in Suva between Foreign Minister Julie Bishop with Fiji military-backed regime chief Voreqe Bainimarama in a report by Asia-Pacific affairs editor Rowan Callick.

She revealed to Bainimarama that the past 56 requests for exemptions under the relaxed travel sanctions policy had been granted (except for one on a technicality), with Callick summing up the “warm” meeting like this:

In the Coalition’s most decisive step away from the foreign policy position of the Rudd-Gillard years, it is restoring links with Fiji across the whole of government, including, crucially, defence ties.

Ms Bishop’s meeting with Commodore Bainimarama went for an hour, running overtime.

According to Callick’s report, Fiji’s Foreign Minister, Ratu Inoke Kubuobola, has been "to Australia often, and the government’s second most powerful figure, the Attorney-General, Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, was allowed to travel to Australia over Christmas". Callick wrote:

Honouring the Matebian massacre victims in East Timor

Student candles for the victims of the Matebian massacre in Timor-Leste.
Photo: Belo Dutay

By Celestino Gusmão for Café Pacific 

University students from Timor-Leste's eastern Baucau district gathered this week to commemorate the 1979 Matebian cave massacre in a month of events focused on protest against the impunity over atrocities during the illegal Indonesian occupation.

At the place at Foho Matebian on the slopes of the mountain of that name where the students lit candles, Indonesian forces used bombs to seal off the inhabitants of an entire village inside a cave with a rockfall.

Even if people had survived the rocks, they would have died of starvation trapped in the cave.
Until now, their remains are buried behind the rocks.

It is in this area during 1978/9 when the majority of the Timor-Leste population abandoned the struggle against Indonesian forces and instead took up a guerrilla struggle.

The Fretilin leadership was disorganised but took up armed struggle in the hills until Indonesia reluctantly agreed to a referendum on independence in 1999.

'Embedded' Ben on the ground with Afghanistan's Pacific 'freedom operation'

Task Force Guam leaders present photojournalist Ben Bohane (centre) with a special award after Bohane recently embedded with the Guam Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 294th Infantry Regiment. After years of covering conflict throughout the Pacific, Bohane ventured to Afghanistan to cover Pacific Islanders serving Operation Enduring Freedom. Photo: Sgt Eddie Siguenza]

Sergeant Edward Siguenza reports from Camp Phoenix in Afghanistan for the Guam News

Benjamin "Ben" Bohane's strides are long, perfectly fitting his 6-foot-3 thin Australian frame.

So when he walks with genetically short-statured Pacific Islanders -- as he did as an embedded photojournalist with the Guam Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 294th Infantry Regiment throughout October -- he immediately established conflict with his military escorts.

"Hey, slow down," a 5-foot-7 Guam soldier shouts as they prepare to board a plane to Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province. "Take smaller steps. The plane's not going anywhere without us."

Bohane turns around and notices his 10-foot lead.

"Sorry mate," he proclaims in his Australian tone. "Size 12 shoes. I was born with big feet."

US military's 'Asia Pivot' strategy condemned at Philippines summit

The Real News video on the controversial "US Pivot" policy.

 From The Real News

ACTIVISTS holding a key international conference in the Philippines this month opposing greater planned United States military presence in Asia, have accused the US of being responsible for rapes, killings and environmental destruction that go unpunished.

Dyan Ruiz, a co-producer of a Real News programme about the conference, has warned of the impact of a new wave of US militarisation in Asia.

The International Conference on the "US Pivot" to Asia-Pacific: US Militarism, Intervention and War was attended by nearly 60 delegates from 13 countries, including Australia, Japan, the Philippnes and South Korea.

Renato Reyes Jr, secretary general of Bayan, a Philippine progressive political organisation and a lead organiser of the conference, said: "It's high time that the people in Asia [should] be allowed to determine their own course and to chart own direction and their own foreign policy free from any dictates of the United States.

Producer Ruiz said: "Despite the support of their own respective governments, the delegates see US military intervention as a violation of their countries' sovereignty.

Powerful documentary on NZ military in Afghanistan poses tough questions

AWARD-WINNING filmmakers Annie Goldson (Brother Number One, An Island Calling), and Kay Ellmers (Canvassing the Treaty, Polynesian Panthers) present the feature version of He Toki Huna: New Zealand in Afghanistan.

It will be screened - full-length - for the first time at the New Zealand International Film Festival on Sunday.

Originally airing in a broadcast version on Māori Television, the film has been extended adding substantial more content.

Following non-embedded journalist Jon Stephenson into Afghanistan, the documentary discusses the role and legacy New Zealand troops have played in that beautiful war-torn country.

Revelations have surfaced that Stephenson was spied upon by US agencies while he was working in Afghanistan, and that as an investigative journalist, he was called a "subversive" by New Zealand's own Defence Force gives the film a currency - even urgency - begging the question of what the role of the media is within our democracy.

Using a range of Kiwi and Afghan voices, He Toki Huna asks why New Zealand became involved in the war, why it stayed so long, and why the public have learned so little.

He Toki Huna challenges the rosy picture presented by most media reports, which have side-stepped the realities of combat and death in a conflict that has dragged on for 10 years.

Jake Bryant's footage captures the extraordinary landscapes of Afghanistan.

• Finalist: Best Factual Script – Script Writers Awards of New Zealand 
• Film website 
• NZ Film Festival screenings:
  Auckland, Sunday, 4 August 2013
  Wellington, 9-10 August 2013
  Christchurch, 18 August 2013
  Dunedin, 21-22 August 2013

Pacific climate change, ‘failed states’ and media muddles

David Robie being interviewed by Litia Ava on Fiji National University's Radio FM88.6
on "open day". Also pictured are Jessica Gounder and Wati Talebula.
Photo: Varanisese Nasilasila (FNU)

WHAT is it with the Fiji media? Or at least with many of on-the-job reporters? Bylines on slightly rehashed press releases, regularly misquoted subjects and "direct quotes" from people when the reporter isn’t even present to hear them … the list goes on.

Café Pacific publisher David Robie has just experienced more of the same with his latest conference presentations at the University of the South Pacific. At USP for a “conference within a conference” with the theme “Islands and Nations: ‘Failed states’ and the environment" at the Pacific Science Inter-congress last week.

Last time it was The Fiji Times at fault. Now it is the Fiji Sun. Reporter Rinu Shyyam correctly reported the call for a new “media morality” (without explaining the context) but the rest of her story was a garbled parody of what Robie actually said.

And it seems the reporter wasn't actually at the presentation at all – she has simply rehashed a University of the South Pacific press release.

The problem is that reporter Shyyam has simply uplifted paraphrased comments from the media release and then reintroduced them into her story as direct quotes and made nonsense of the statements.

‘Free-riding defence’ Kiwis slammed by rightist Danish MP over cultural heritage

A graphic from the Danish tabloid BT featuring Marie Krarup. The headline reads:
"'Doubts cast on Māori-Marie's penis story", referring to the MP's
comments about carvings in a visit to the Navy's marae. Source: PMW

THE RIGHTWING Danish MP who stirred an upheaval Down Under with her attack on taha Māori – traditional rituals and protocols that are basic to everyday life in Aotearoa/New Zealand – barely seems to have any understanding of the country she visited last month.

But underneath all the defensive bleatings from the PC brigade this week in response to Marie Krarup’s misguided criticisms of a “grotesque” powhiri with “half-naked” men poking out their tongues published in the tabloid BT, her arguably more damaging condemnation of New Zealand’s "humanitarian" military seems to have largely gone unnoticed by mainstream media.

Only Pacific Media Watch’s Daniel Drageset, a Norwegian radio journalist who is a postgraduate student at AUT University and who has a fluent command of Danish, seems to have got the point. He took the trouble to translate Krarup’s original commentary on her blog and his story Danish MP apologises after calling Maori powhiri ‘grotesque’, mocking ‘free-ride’ defence was run in full on Pacific Media Centre Online and Pacific Scoop.

Clearly Krarup had no idea that she was being given a great honour with a cultural welcome that has a history going back centuries. And several "embarrassed" Danes have written to PMC and Pacific Scoop criticising Krarup over her views.

Although Krarup might seem a minor political player, being the defence spokesperson for the third-ranked party Danish People’s Party ( a mere 12.3 percent of the votes in the 2011 election), which has extremist views against migrants (especially Muslim), she was in fact a member of the six-strong Danish Committee on Defence visiting parliamentary group.