Auckland mayor Phil Goff admiring a photograph by John Miller taken of the politician when he was a student activist campaigning for a nuclear-free New Zealand. Goff spoke at the "Celebrating 30 Years of Nuclear-Free Aotearoa/New Zealand" at the Depot Artspace in Devonport today. Image" David Robie
CONGRATULATIONS everybody for that tremendous achievement three decades ago. And thank you to WILPF Aotearoa and Ruth Coombes for inviting me. It was literally a David and Goliath struggle to make New Zealand nuclear-free against United States and global pressure – not just David Lange, prime minister at the time, although he was vital too.
The real “David” was the ordinary people of New Zealand who exerted extraordinary pressure on the government to deliver. The barrages of letters from citizens, constant lobbying by peace campaigners, local councils – such as right here in Devonport -- declaring themselves nuclear-free, the door-knocking petitioners – and, of course, the spectacular protests.
However, in my few minutes I would like to talk about the Pacific context, as this was my background. While the New Zealand campaign and success was tremendously inspirational for the Pacific, it should not be forgotten that some small Pacific countries and communities were actually ahead of the game.
MORE than 2000 people have taken part in a colourful and
vibrant “Aotearoa Against Muslim Ban” march in New Zealand’s largest city
to condemn the “racist and Islamophobic” immigration bans ordered by US
President Trump.
The protest rally was held in Auckland’s Aotea Square
yesterday in solidarity with those affected by President Trump’s executive
orders to implement a 90-day ban on people from seven Muslim majority countries
and 120 day ban on all refugees, with an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees.
The Aotearoa Against Muslim Ban coalition condemned the
US bans ordered by Trump.
“These border policies are racist, Islamophobic and
unacceptable,” said Mehwish, one of the organisers of the “No Ban, No
Wall” protest.
“They continue a pattern of white supremacist immigration
exclusion in colonial settler countries like the United States. Bill English
refusing to call it for what it is – racist – is a dangerously weak response
and doesn’t represent the people of Aotearoa.
Student footage as the Papua New Guinean police tried to arrest the leader, Kenneth Rapa, moments before opening fire on the crowd. Video: Cafe Pacific on YouTube
BARELY had the whiff of teargas and gunshot smoke drifted away from the University of Papua New Guinea campus this week when the blame game started in earnest with the O'Neill government pointing the finger at the parliamentary opposition and also international media.
The media were blamed for initial reports by some reputable international brands that up to four people had been killed. There were no deaths, but four of the 23 people reported to be injured were taken to Port Moresby General Hospital critically wounded and stabilised.
It could have been an even worse tragedy.
Sadly, the scenes of chaos shown on campus and chaotic news reports are not uncommon.
I lived in Papua New Guinea for five years during the 1990s when I headed the journalism programme at UPNG.
There were at least two occasions when I was there when police came onto campus - a provocation in itself as there is an understanding that police don't do that, if not actually illegal - and fired teargas at protesting students.
A pensive Peter Willcox at a detention hearing at the Kalininskiy Court in Saint Petersburg in 2013 before being set free. Originally charged with "piracy" with a penalty of up to 15 years, Willcox faced the prospect of languishing in a Russian jail for the rest of his life. Image: Igor Podgorny/Greenpeace
WHEN Anote Tong, the former president of Kiribati, a collection of 33
tiny atolls sprawling across the Pacific equator in the frontline of
climate change, believed he wasn’t being listened to, he thought of a
simple strategy – polar bears.
By comparing himself and his country’s meagre population of 102,000 to the endangered creature, he suddenly got more headlines.
The endangered polar bear … anecdote for former President Tong,
FB mojo for Peter Willcox. Image: Still from Greenpeace video
And he got the idea after having just seen a polar bear in the wild.
“I drew a comparison that what happens to polar bears will also be happening to us in our part of the world,” he explained.
Tong feared that the bears in their Arctic habitat, like the people
of Kiribati in the Pacific, were in danger of losing their homes in the
near future.
Today the polar bear is the mojo adopted by Greenpeace skipper Peter Willcox on his Facebook page.
Café Pacific video of the TPP protest in Auckland this week by Del Abcede/PMC
OPINION: By Professor Jane Kelsey
In New Zealand, we dared to declare ourselves nuclear-free in the
1980s – dire warnings that ditching the Anzus alliance would make us a
pariah, isolated and ridiculed never came to pass. Instead, we were
celebrated as a small, independent nation with the guts to decide our
own future. Why can’t we do the same with the Trans-Pacific Partnership
(TPP)?
The National government ignored widespread opposition from ordinary New Zealanders when it signed the secretly negotiated deal. Doubtless we’ll continue to be fed the old Anzus line that New Zealand can’t afford to not to be at the table.
National’s glitzy new “TPP fact” page is bad wine repackaged in new
bottles. Here’s a few facts they don’t tell you: The projected economic
gains of 0.9 per cent of GDP by 2030 are within their own margin of
error, even before costs are factored in and disregarding unrealistic
modelling.
More than 1600 US companies, the most litigious in the world, will
gain new rights they can enforce through private offshore tribunals
if/when regulation damages their value or profits.
The agreement guarantees foreign states and corporations a right of
input into regulatory decisions, which Maori, trade unions, small
businesses and local government would not have.
David Robie speaking at the Eyes of Fire launch last night.
Image: Del Abcede/PMC; background screen image: John Miller
COMMENT:This was David Robie's book launch address.
IT'S HARD to believe that it is now 30 years – three whole decades – since state-backed terrorists blew up the peaceful environmental ship Rainbow Warrior – a vessel with such an inspiring name – and our friend and campaigner Fernando Pereira lost his life.
I vowed to myself that I would continue the crusade as an engaged journalist by telling and retelling this story on any occasion I could.
This was the best I could do to keep Fernando’s memory alive, and to support the struggle of the Rongelap people – and all Pacific peoples harmed by the nuclear powers and their testing for more than a half century.
I remember the launch of the very first edition of Eyes of Fire in early 1986 out on the Viaduct aboard an old Auckland ferry.
Thanks to publisher Michael Guy, we had this giant cake iced with the French Tricolore. Dancing on the top of the cake were three frogmen and the phrase “J’accuse”.
Greenpeace campaigners Dimitry Litvinov and Arctic Sunrise skipper
Peter Willcox (right)
outside a St Petersburg immigration office. Photo: Moscow Times
AS THE last Greenpeace activist detained in the Arctic 30 protest received notification today that he was cleared of all charges under a recently passed amnesty, several other international activists who had already been granted amnesty have received permission to leave Russia.
The news marks the end of a saga that has seen activists of 19 different nationalities spend several weeks in Russian detention despite an international outcry over the case and Western demands to release the suspects.
Twenty-eight Greenpeace activists, as well as a Russian photographer and a British videographer, were charged with "piracy" - which was later changed to "hooliganism" - for staging a protest against oil drilling at Gazprom's Prirazlomnaya oil platform in the Barents Sea in September.
As of today, seven members of the group had been granted visas from the Federal Migration Service, while others expected to receive their visas by the end of the week.
Activists from countries that share a visa-free regime with Russia - Ukraine, Brazil, Turkey and Argentina - were allowed to leave the country immediately.
Timorese protesters condemn Australian policy over the Timor Sea oil and gas reserves issue
and call for justice over the disputed maritime boundary. Photo: La'o Hamutuk
Quote from the Timor-Leste development and resources watchdog La'o Hamutuk over the recent news agency 'false report' on a demonstration over Australian duplicity over the Timor Sea disputed oil and gas industry:
Why are the world's media so eager to report lies about violence committed by people from Timor-Leste, but so reluctant -- in the past and still today -- to report truthfully on those who commit violence against them?
This was from a recent article posted by the NGO on its blog over allegations of fabrication by a news agency stringer and condemning media reluctance to correct the facts.
ANALYSIS: ON Thursday, 5 December, about 20 students and activists peacefully protested across the street from the Australian Embassy in Dili to urge Australia to respect Timor-Leste's sovereignty and rights to its undersea oil and gas.
In their statement (original Tetum), they urged Australia to "stop stealing and occupying the Timor Sea, but show your good will as a large nation which follows democratic principles to accept a maritime boundary based on international legal principles."
Timorese protest in Dili over Australian 'greed' over the Timor Sea boundary issue.
Photo: Juvinal Dias/La'o Hamutuk
An alternative view to the mainstream media coverage on the Timor Sea issue. A statement from the Movement against the Occupation of the Timor Sea, a Timor-Leste activist group that has been smeared by a false AFP report about a demonstration across the road from the Autralian Embassy in the East Timorese capital of Dili on December 5:
FOR MANY years, Australia has been stealing the oil and gas from the Timor Sea, in an area which belongs to Timor-Leste under international legal principles.
Sadly, Australia has shown its manner and its greed to make our small and poor country in this region lose our resources and sovereignty.
After it became aware of the oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea, Australia supported Indonesia for more than two decades as it committed genocide against the people of this land, stealing and using its strong economic and political power to trample us, making themselves rich by leaving us in
poverty.
A few days ago, the Australian government used its intelligence service to seize documents from Timor-Leste's lawyer in the CMATS (Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea) arbitration case, and to put pressure on a "whistleblower" so that he could not testify.
Aboriginal elder Kevin Buzzacott in silhouette with the West Papuans'
Morning Star
- banned by Indonesian authorities - and Aboriginal
flags on
the West Papua Freedom Flotilla.
CAMPAIGNERS on board the West Papua Freedom Flotilla will ‘rot in jail’ if the Australian government doesn't help them if they get into trouble, says Aboriginal elder Kevin Buzzacott.
The flotilla has gathered a range of pro-independence campaigners on the journey going from Lake Eyre in northern South Australia, via New South Wales and the Queensland coast, across the Torres Strait to Daru in Papua New Guinea and finally Merauke in West Papua, where the flotilla is scheduled to arrive early next month.
Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr says Australian authorities have informed the Freedom Flotilla that local laws and penalties will apply in Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
“We’ve given them this warning. Therefore, should they end up in prison as a result of breaching the law of Indonesia or Papua New Guinea we’ve got no obligation to give them consular support,” Carr said, according to news.com.au.
An interview with David Robie on the Pacific at the Protest and Media conference in London. Video report by Sumy Sadurni
'The woman in red'. Photo: Clip from vimeo.com video
THE SO-CALLED “woman in red” became a reluctant icon of a people’s revolt in Turkey this month.
Ceyola Sungur, an academic at Istanbul’s Technical University, was projected into instant global fame because of media images of her being blasted at point blank-range with pepper spray by security police.
Dressed in a red summer dress, the unarmed and defenceless woman’s defiance in the face of state assaults on protesters demonstrating over plans to remove the city’s central Gezi Park adjoining Taksim Square to make way for mega property development has become an iconic symbol of resistance.
“There are a lot of people who were at the park and they were also tear-gassed,” the uncomfortable heroine told Turkey’s TV24. “There’s no difference between them and me.”
While the protests raged on amid concerns among many Turkish women that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan plans a major roll back of women’s rights, Turkish issues were among the many being explored at an international “protest and media” conference in London, jointly organised by the University of Westminster’s Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) and the British Journalism Review.
THE CACEROLAZO has returned as social protest to Argentina with a vengeance – three rallies in a week and Café Pacific was at one of them along with other media. This Latin-American brand of protest where people bang pots and pans – usually over poverty and economic human rights issues – began on May 31 when the CP publisher was actually celebrating his birthday at Rio’s Copacabana. The following day he flew to Buenos Aires and was caught in the middle of Cacerolazo 2 on June 1 at the intersection of Santa Fe and Callao where about 2000 people gathered and then marched on the Plaza de Mayo. Finally, Cacerolazo 3 on June 8 attracted thousands who protested at the central plaza (around the city’s spectacular Obelisk).
But unlike the spontaneous and famous cacerolazo of 2002 when middleclass demonstrations over the devaluation of the peso ousted the government, the current social democrat government of President Christina Fernández de Kirchner seems solidly in control at the moment.
Cacerolazo 2 protest in Recoleta district of Buenos Aires on June 1. Photo: David Robie
The mainly middleclass protesters are alarmed over currency controls that affect travel abroad and are aimed at curbing the outflow of US dollars from the economy. Protesters are also angry about fiscal taxation reforms that will triple rates for property and land owners and allegations of corruption. Farmers are also protesting over the land tax reforms.
At one cacerolazo protest, three journalists working for the public television current affairs programme were assaulted, prompting complaints by media freedom groups. The assaulted Television Publicá journalists from the 6, 7,8 programme were named by the Buenos Aires Herald as as Lucas Martinez, Sergio Loguzzo and Ezequiel Schneider. This was reported by Pacific Media Watch.
A local senator, Anibal Fernández, enraged protesters with statements reported in the media that exposed his hypocrisy and, by implication, that of other lawmakers.
According to Global Voices website, which reported on the cacerolazos, when Senator Fernández was asked why he had his savings in US dollars while he asked citizens to “think in pesos,” he replied: “Because I feel like it. Didn't you hear me? Because I feel like it, it is my right, I do as I please with my money."
On Twitter Claudia Rucci (@claudiarucci) reacted to the senator's statements:
Anibal Fernandez, with his remarks, is a great mobiliser of the masses… of others. Every word is an invitation for a #cacerolazo. What does he want?
A cacerolazo logo distributed for the June 1 protest by Twitter.
The protests have been fuelled by Twitter mobilisation and updates with the hashtag #cacerolazo
Wikipedia describes a cacerolazo or cacerolada as a form of popular protest practised in certain Spanish-speaking countries – in particular Argentina, Chile and Uruguay – which consists in a group of people creating noise by banging pots, pans, and other utensils in order to call for attention. What is peculiar about this type of demonstration is that the people protest from their own homes, thus achieving a high level of support and participation.
