UN critics join global outrage over Duterte’s Rappler ‘free press’ attack

Rappler’s CEO and executive editor Maria Ressa says that the Philippine government spends a lot of effort to turn journalism into a crime which shouldn’t be the case. Video: Rappler

By David Robie from Asia Pacific Report

Three United Nations special rapporteurs have added their voice to the global protests this week over the President Rodrigo Durterte government bureaucracy’s attack on the independent online news website Rappler and a free press in the Philippines.

Rappler has been the latest media target for the administration’s wrath over a tenacious public interest watchdog that has been relentless in its coverage of the republic’s so-called “war on drugs” and state disinformation.

Some media freedom advocates claim that the Philippines is facing its worst free expression and security crisis since the Marcos dictatorship, with The New York Times denouncing the “ruthlessness” and “viciousness” of Duterte’s disdain for democracy.

The death toll in the extrajudicial spate of killings range between 3993 (official) and more than 12,000 since Duterte took office on June 30, 2016, according to Human Rights Watch.

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.

Film industry sources criticise TVNZ ‘devaluing’ of Māori programmes

New Māori and Pacific television programming commissioning move for TVNZ leaves many
in industry "shocked and questioning". Image: TEARA

 By Kendall Hutt of Pacific Media Watch

Independent filmmakers fear a slow erosion of Māori and Pacific content at Television New Zealand has begun.

Their fears have emerged after the role of commissioner for Māori and Pacific programmes was removed from a full-time commissioning role in recent restructuring by TVNZ.

The move has left some within the film and television industry shocked and questioning whether it is ignorance or arrogance.

“Given that we are an increasing demographic, this seems like a mad racist move,” said Joanna Paul (Ngai te Rangi), an independent television producer who was one of the pioneers of the Māori Television Service.

“That TVNZ considers this a part-time job is arrogant and ignorant enough, but given there is more Māori and Pacific programming on air than ever before beggars belief,” Paul said.

Tiny Timbulsloko fights back in face of Indonesia’s ‘ecological disaster’

Drone views of the village of Timbulsloko showing the scale of coastal erosion and sinking flatlands in an area that once used to be rice fields on the edge of the Central Java city of Semarang. Mangroves are being rapidly re-established. Drone footage source: CoREM (UNDIP). Video compilation: Scott Creighton (AUT), David Robie’s Café Pacific

ANALYSIS: By David Robie in Semarang, Indonesia

A vast coastal area of the Indonesian city of Semarang, billed nine months ago by a national newspaper as “on the brink of ecological disaster”, is fighting back with a valiant survival strategy.

Thanks to a Dutch mangrove restoration programme and flexible bamboo-and-timber “eco” seawalls, some 70,000 people at risk in the city of nearly two million have some slim hope for the future.

An area that was mostly rice fields and villages on the edge of the old city barely two decades ago has now become “aquatic” zones as flooding high tides encroach on homes.

Onetime farmers have been forced to become fishermen.

Villagers living in Bedono, Sriwulan, Surodadi and Timbulsloko in Demak regency and urban communities in low-lying parts of the city are most at risk.

Indonesian academic exchange an opportunity for unique collaboration

Universitas Gadjah Mada's Centre for Southeast Asian Social Studies (CESASS)
meets AUT's Pacific Media Centre with a Sky Tower backdrop. Photo: PMC

From AUT University

Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie will next week join academics from around the world in a global professorial exchange with Indonesia's Universitas Gadjah Mada. In return, six academics from the progressive Yogyakarta university have visited Auckland University of Technology for the first communication and publication research collaboration of its kind in New Zealand.

The academics from Yogyakarta, led by Gadjah Mada University's Centre for Southeast Asian Social Studies (CESASS) director Dr Hermin Indah Wahyuni, arrived in Auckland earlier this month for a two-week visit featuring workshops, seminars and joint research projects related to climate change.

They will also be collaborating with their newly published research journal IKAT, the PMC's 23-year-old Pacific Journalism Review and AUT Library's Tuwhera research platform on a major project involving ecological communication and Asia-Pacific maritime disasters.

Dr Robie is one of six academics invited by CESASS as part of the Indonesian government's World Class Professor (WCP) programme to strengthen international publication and research studies.

PNG activist blogger Martyn Namorong protests online in defiance of gag order

PNG blogger Martyn Namorong ... gagged but not silenced. Image: MN Twitter

By Mong Palatino of Global Voices

A Papua New Guinea court has issued a gag order against Martyn Namorong, a prominent political blogger and activist accused of defaming Patilias Gamato, the country’s Electoral Commissioner.

Gamato this week sued Namorong after Namorong compared him to a "fruit" (tomato) on social media, as reported by Pacific Media Watch. When Namorong learned about the court order, he posted this image on Twitter before adding the above blue gag selfie image:

He added that he also needed a lawyer.