The ‘nuclear free’ Vanuatu girl with the enchanting smile

Riding out from Aneityum Island to the grass airstrip for the return flight back to Tanna.

By DAVID ROBIE

She had the most enchanting smile, even though she had lost her baby teeth. Her toothless grin turned out to be perfect for the role.

The five-year-old girl had her face painted with a black anti-nuclear symbol – different motifs on both her cheeks.

Beside her was a neatly sketched poster: “No nukes: Please don’t spoil my beautiful face”.

This was the scene in Port Vila’s Independence Park in 1983 during the region’s second Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific Movement conference.

It was during the heady days of nuclear-free activism with Vanuatu, the world’s newest nation only three years old and founding Prime Minister Walter Hadye Lini leading the way.

Mystery of the 1983 Vanuatu “nuclear free” girl finally solved

June Keitadi (left), now Warigini, with Del Abcede grating coconut at a chance meeting on Aneityum Island
on Christmas Day 2015. Photo by David Robie

By DAVID ROBIE

So the mystery is finally over. In 1983, I took this photo of a young ni-Vanuatu girl at a nuclear-free Pacific rally in Independence Park, Port Vila. She was aged about five at the time.

June Keitadi with her family's "No nukes" placard
at Independence Park, Port Vila, Vanuatu,1983. 
On the left (yellow tee) is her mother Annie Weitas. 
Photo: David Robie

She was just a delightful happy painted face in the crowd that day. But her message was haunting: “Please don’t spoil my beautiful face” had quite an impact on me. When monochrome and colour versions of this photo were published in various Pacific media and magazines, a question kept tugging at my heart.

“Who is she? Where is she from and what is she doing now?”

Her placard slogan became the inspiration for my 2014 book, Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific, published by Little Island Press in New Zealand.

I would have loved to have named her in the book with the cover image of her. So this spurred me onto to more determined efforts to discover her identity.

First of all I posted the photo – and a Hawai’ian solidarity video that also showed the little girl, discovered by Alistar Kata – on my blog Café Pacific last October 10. Almost 1100 people viewed the blog item, but no tip-offs.

Nuclear free: Now solved - the mystery of this ni-Vanuatu girl from 1983

THIS GIRL is featured on the front cover of David Robie's 2014 book - Don't Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific (Little Island Press). It was taken in 1983 at Independence Park, Port Vila, Vanuatu, during the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific conference.

She also appears in a Hawai'an Voice video version of the song Nuclear Free (at 1min08sec) by Huarere. I would love to know who she is and where she is today.

Perhaps she is in her late 30s today?

If anybody has any information about her identity and where she might be now, please email David Robie.

Fiji, PNG lead betrayal, but still West Papuans triumph

A massive crowd at Timika, Papua, greets the MSG decision to grant West Papuans observer status.
Image: Free West Papua Campaign

COMMENT By David Robie

THE Melanesian Spearhead Group leaders’ summit in Honiara this week must go down as the most shameful since the organisation was founded two decades ago.

It had the opportunity to take a fully principled stand on behalf of the West Papuan people, brutally oppressed by Indonesia after an arguably “illegal” occupation for more than a half century.

Host nation Solomon Islands Prime Minister and chair Mannaseh Sogareve set the tone by making an impassioned plea at the start of the summit, predicting a “test” for the MSG. He said it would be an issue of human rights and the rule of law.

In the end, the MSG failed the test with a betrayal of the people of West Papua by the two largest members. Although ultimately it is a decision by consensus.

Instead, the MSG granted Indonesia a “promotion” to associate member status – an Asian country, not even Melanesian?

Rainbow Warrior reflections - new Eyes of Fire on way

Flashback: David Robie presents Eyes of Fire to PM Ham Lini in August 2006.
Vanuatu Daily Post story

CAFÉ PACIFIC offers a bit of nostalgia. In just over a couple of months, New Zealand and the Pacific will be marking the 30th anniversary of the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior in an outrageous case of state terrorism by French secret agents in Auckland's Waitemata Harbour on 10 July 1985.

Dutch photojournalist Fernando Pereira was killed as part of the double-bomb plot. An unwarranted attack on a peaceful environmental ship.

The word is that there will soon be a fresh new (fifth) edition of David Robie's book Eyes of Fire. Out of a dozen books or so to surface out of the l'Affaire Greenpeace, David's was the only one written by somebody actually on board. There will be new content and new pictures.

The publishers, Little Island Press, also have a surprise package planned. More about that later.

Sedition, e-libel become the new Pacific media front line

Participants in today's University of the South Pacific media freedom forum chaired by
Stanley Simpson (centre), founding editor of Wansolwara. Image: USP Livestreaming

Criminal cyber defamation, journalist killings with impunity and legal gags are growing threats to Asia-Pacific press freedoms, writes educator David Robie on World Media Freedom Day.

ONE OF Fiji’s best investigative journalists and media trainers ended up as a spin doctor and henchman for wannabe dictator George Speight. Like his mentor, he is now languishing in jail for life for treason.

Some newshounds in Papua New Guinea have pursued political careers thanks to their media training, but most have failed to make the cut in national politics.

A leading publisher in Tonga was forced to put his newspaper on the line in a dramatic attempt to overturn a constitutional gag on the media. He won—probably hastening the pro-democracy trend in the royal fiefdom’s 2010 general election.

The editor of the government-owned newspaper in Samoa runs a relentless and bitter “holier than thou” democracy campaign against the “gutless” media in Fiji that he regards as too soft on the military-backed regime. Yet the editor-in-chief of the rival independent newspaper accuses him of being a state propagandist in a nation that has been ruled by one party for three decades.

In West Papua, Indonesia still imposes a ban on foreign journalists in two Melanesian provinces where human rights violations are carried out with virtual impunity. Journalists in the Philippines are also assassinated with impunity.

Vanuatu PM’s speech spotlights Indonesian Papuan atrocities and Pacific ‘blind eye

Vanuatu Prime Minister Moana Carcasses Kalosil (left) with Papuan journalist
Victor Mambor in Noumea. Photo: Tabloid Jubi

By DAVID ROBIE

SHAME on New Zealand politicians. With the courageous exception of the Green Party’s Catherine Delahunty, most of the rest offer a shameful silence over Indonesia’s human rights violations in West Papua.

The Melanesian brothers and sisters of the colonised region, forcibly invaded by Indonesian paratroopers in 1962 and annexed under the fraudulent United Nations “Act of Free Choice” in 1969, have suffered under Indonesian atrocities and brutal rule ever since.

But it took the Prime Minister of Vanuatu,  Moana Carcasses Kalosil, to take the podium at the United Nations Human Rights Council and condemn Jakarta for its past and ongoing crimes in West Papua, before the world took notice.

This not only shames New Zealand, it also exposes most Pacific leaders for their lack of spine over Papuan human rights.

When Vanuatu became independent from the British and French joint colonial condominium, better known as “pandemonium”, in 1980, founding Prime Minister Father Walter Lini was a champion for West Papuan independence.

'Secrecy for sale' offshore bank leaks draw global responses

By Emily Menkes, Michael Hudson and Kimberley Porteous of the ICIJ

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalism (ICIJ) investigative series on offshore secrecy – which draws from a cache of 2.5 million leaked secret records – has ignited reactions around the globe, including the Pacific.

Since the initial release of stories by the ICIJ and its media partners across the world, public officials have issued statements, governments have launched investigations, and politicians and journalists have been debating the implications of the records and the reporting.

Among reactions and responses:

• Bayartsogt Sangajav: resigned his post after offshore account revelation: Bayartsogt Sangajav, deputy speaker of the Mongolian Parliament, has reportedly resigned from his post following ICIJ's revelations about his undeclared offshore company and bank account. In a parliamentary session he was asked to explain his actions. Several MPs called for further disciplinary action, including expelling him from Parliament entirely.
• Santosh Kumar Agarwal (Kedia), a member of the board of directors for the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, has resigned from the organisation after his offshore dealings were revealed: “In the interest of the integrity of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre as [an] organisation and the industry as a whole, Kedia has taken the initiative to withdraw from the AWDC's board of directors, awaiting the outcome of a potential investigation,” said a statement released by the company.

'Melanesia isn't free until West Papua is free'

In the face of state repression and international indifference by Indonesian authorities, West Papuan
activists have been locked in a life or death struggle for independence.

Al Jazeera's People & Power reports on one of the most forgotten conflicts in the world.

Airi Ingram and Jason MacLeod trace the upsurge in regional Pacific support for the free West Papua movement. They conclude that even if politicians have traditionally been slow to respond, "ordinary people in this part of the Pacific are painfully aware that the West Papuan people continue to live under the gun". And the good news is that even politicians are now starting to wake up and support the cause, especially in neighbouring Papua New Guinea.

MELANESIAN support for a free West Papua has always been high. Travel throughout Papua New Guinea and you will often hear people say that West Papua and Papua New Guinea is "wanpela graun" – one land – and that West Papuans on the other side of the border are family and kin.

In the Solomon Islands, Kanaky, Fiji and especially Vanuatu, people will tell you that “Melanesia is not free until West Papua is free”. This was the promise that the late Father Walter Lini, Vanuatu’s first prime minister, made.

Ordinary people in this part of the Pacific are painfully aware that the West Papuan people continue to live under the gun. It is the politicians in Melanesia who have been slow to take up the cause.

But that may be changing.

Pacific Media Watch highlights threats to region's freedom

 
THANKS AGAIN  to Pacific Media Watch:

Brutal repression of journalists and civil rights in Indonesian-ruled West Papua, censorship and self-censorship in Fiji and abuses of a free press in Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu have been highlighted in a Pacific media freedom report being published tomorrow.

The 41-page report by the Pacific Media Centre’s freedom project Pacific Media Watch is a harrowing indictment of the “fragile” state of the media in the region.

Marking the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day (WPFD) - observed globally on May 3 each year - the report is also accompanied by an eight minute video about the media made by a School of Communication Studies crew at the Auckland University of Technology.

“The state of Pacific media freedom remains fragile with setbacks across the region in spite of the brief glimmer of hope in Fiji with the lifting of the Public Emergency Regulations (PER) at the start of this year,” said Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie.

“While official censorship has been lifted, the tough Fiji Media Industry Development Decree imposed by the military-backed regime is still in force and is a major chilling factor for the local – and foreign – news media.

“Self-censorship is rife and suspicion plagues rival media groups eyeing a favoured place in an authoritarian mediascape.

“It is not an encouraging environment for freedom of expression as the country looks to the promised and hoped for elections in 2014.”

Media freedom video
The media freedom video, reported by Pasifika student Jordan Puati and directed by AUT television journalism lecturer Danni Mulrennan, examines media freedom issues in New Zealand as well as in the Pacific.

It also highlights freedom issues faced by Māori, Pasifika and ethnic journalists in comparison to the mainstream media culture.

The video and media freedom report will be launched at a WPFD seminar hosted by the Pacific Media Centre and chaired by Fijian Dr Steven Ratuva of Auckland University’s Centre for Pacific Studies at AUT tomorrow night.

Dr Robie said the media freedom report had been republished in book form from an article published in Pacific Journalism Review late last year.

He said the worrying trend set last year had continued into this year and he cited the following issues:

•    Fiji: The lifting of the Public Emergency Regulations (PER) has ended formal censorship the draconian Fiji Media Industry Development Decree 2010 is still in place:  “Many journalists and civil society advocates are still fearful of speaking out due to the harsh legal penalties that they face under the law and this will damage the democratisation process,” Dr Robie said.

•    Papua New Guinea: A rise in assaults and intimidation of journalists reporting on the ongoing political crisis with “two governments” since late last year, two violent incidents involving armed police. “The continued political uncertainty and climate of impunity has raised the stakes for journalists,” Dr Robie said.

•    West Papua: “In the past year, there have been two killings of journalists, five abductions or attempted abductions, 18 assaults (including repeated cases against some journalists), censorship by both the civil and military authorities and two police arrests (but no charges),” said the media freedom report.

Dangerous places
Dr Robie said: “Clearly the two provinces of West Papua are the most dangerous places for the media in the Pacific region.

“While politically, the territory is regarded globally as part of Indonesia, the Papuans are Melanesian and the Pacific Islands Forum and Pacific media advocacy groups should be giving their Melanesian brothers priority support.

“This is the major media freedom hot spot at the moment. But it is mostly dropping below the radar for Australia, New Zealand and independent Pacific nations.”

• More information on the media freedom seminar
• PMC media freedom video
• Pacific Media Watch media freedom report
• Post May 3 media freedom updates on PMW 
• Pacific Media Watch

Memo to PINA – get your Vanuatu facts right

SO PINA finally came to the party, after days of Pacific journos asking around the region’s traps why hasn’t the main media organisation taken up the cudgels of media freedom? Yet again? PINA finally acted four days after the March 4 brutal political attack and assault on Vanuatu Daily Post publisher Marc Neil-Jones. The publisher plans to take a private prosecution against Public Utilities Minister Harry Iauko and the “gang of eight” henchmen, who were allegedly led by the politician in the attack, if the police fail to act.

Current PINA (Pacific Islands News Association) president Moses Stevens is also from Vanuatu, but Stevens and Neil-Jones have been feuding for years. PINA should have been at the forefront of the Pacific protests. Instead, it wagged the tail.

Auckland-based Pacific Media Centre made a statement on Saturday as soon as the front page of the Daily Post had been sighted, branding the attack as “mindless brutality”, the Cook Islands-based Pacific Freedom Forum followed on Sunday with condemnation. Then followed the International Federation of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and Samoa-based Pasifika Media Association on Monday with Fiji-based PINA and the Media Asosiesen blong Vanuatu (MAV) bringing up the rear on Tuesday.

Even then there was a grudging sting in Stevens’ statement with a reference to alleged “biased reporting”. Here, Neil-Jones, holds PINA to account for its attempt at qualifying the seriousness of the attack.

THANKS TO PINA AND MAV

By Marc Neil-Jones

I have today sent the following email to Moses Stevens thanking him for his PINA statement of support. I have also thanked MAV for their support.

Much appreciated Moses. Despite our differences, this assault is an outrage and Iauko should be sacked. I thank you for PINA support despite us not being members currently.

One thing in relation to your press statement on Iauko's allegation of “bias” [in] reporting. The “news” he reacted to on Friday was Transparency International's weekly opinion column which is vetted by lawyers and based on their own investigations into corruption. It is an opinion piece based on fact and documentary evidence in their investigations, vetted by a qualified lawyer. Same as the two opinionated letters to the editor [published] on that same day voicing anger and irritation over Iauko's actions in suspending the Airports Vanuatu board. My article earlier in the week on him suspending the AV board did not need comment from him as I had a copy of his letter to the board suspending them and I spoke to two board members and the expat adviser who had been told not to come into the office, all of whom confirmed what had happened.

I was shown the letter from Iauko. I was asked to investigate the legality of it and this was where the news thrust was as Iauko as Minister of Public Utilities is only a 50 percent shareholder in Airports Vanuatu and the Minister of Finance has the other 50 percent. I received advice from our lawyers his action was illegal if he had not got the support of Moana Carcasses. I called Moana and he confirmed that he knew nothing about it, had not been contacted by Iauko before he sent letters out suspending the board over allegations of malpractice and that Iauko could not do anything without his support and that what he had done was not right.

News hook
That was the news hook. I had proof the letter had been sent without any approval from Carcasses.

I didn't need to contact Iauko as he couldn't deny it as I had the letter. It was not “bias” in any way and just because we write about a minister if we are basing the story on documentary evidence, eg Joe Ligo's official report on corruption in Lands while he was Director-General of Lands and had the power to get any file, document or staff he needed to do a thorough investigation for a report requested by the PM. He was the most senior civil servant in lands when he did the investigation and report, which is why it is so damaging. I simply quoted direct from the official report and raised questions on why tenders hadn't been followed that resulted in Kalsakau getting land without a tender for 1/10th of its value.

The government could have got vt50 million but they got next to nothing. I accept VBTC [Vanuatu Broadcasting and Television Corporation] would have to get “the other side” in order to put them in the best possible light as they are owned by government but we do not need to, provided ethics are followed and the news item is based on fact and not opinion. If Iauko had a problem with Transparency International's criticism of him, he should have taken it up with them or take them to court in the normal way.

You have in fact inferred that we were “biased” and have asked for more balanced reporting. This seems to be agreeing with the minister and you voicing your concerns. I have issues with that as the news on Iauko was perfectly good, followed standard journalism practice and was no excuse for him breaking the law and clearly breaching the Leadership Code.

Transparency International are a very well known NGO fighting corruption and Marie-Noelle Patterson has a huge reputation following her years as Ombudsman. I have no problem whatsoever with their opinions and we do not need permission from Iauko or his comment before we run the column or a letter to the editor. I hope you can see this Moses.

Assaulted a number of times
For your information, I have been assaulted a number of times and not twice as is being claimed. Correctional Services with Jackson Noel a couple of years ago which has not gone to court; Christopher Emele's family with two men and two women when I was breaking news he didn't like on the VMA; assault and rough handling by the police when I was thrown in jail for demanding an officer who assaulted Sam Taffo at a rugby game between [the Police team] and USP [University of the South Pacific] be suspended; assault by Morkin Steven when he was Minister of Finance at Trader Vics, when he reacted to news of his drunken behaviour and car crash was carried.

I let that go as he profusely apologised afterwards. I was also assaulted by one of Willie Jimmy’s boys over a news item on a court case involving Willie that was in the paper when I was having a friendly conversation with Willie Jimmy at Club Vanuatu. If you recall, Willie then called up and told me to keep him out of the story or he would come and smash the office up - and I refused.

Sabby Natongs sent his boys in when we broke the news of his private security force assisting the VMF. He reacted and tried to stop us printing and I was assaulted. He made me do a custom ceremony at Blacksands and invited VBTC radio and TV to cover my apology.

A year or two later, Natapei as PM admitted in Parliament that Tanna boys under Sabby were helping the VMF and now Sabby even advertises it. He used custom against me when the paper was accurate all along. There have been other minor instances in the 1990s I have forgotten about. Brain cells tend to go when you are hit around so much!

Health issues
At 53 years of age and an insulin dependent diabetic with health issues [and] not writing much, how bad does this look when Iauko needs to come in [and] bash an older guy with eight other people. If he was a real man he would come by himself as I am a lot older and weaker than him.

This clearly isn't right and my problem now is that I am highly cynical of whether the police and female Public Prosecutor will have the balls to take Iauko to court or not. They haven't with my past two assaults.

Marc Neil-Jones
Publisher
Vanuatu Daily Post
Port Vila

Images: Top: Marc Neil-Jones (centre) and staff; PINA president Moses Stevens. - Pacific Scoop. Middle: Marc with Café Pacific publisher David Robie in the press room during better times. - Photo: Del Abcede/PMC

SIGN THE STOP VIOLENCE AGAINST JOURNALISTS IN THE PACIFIC PETITION

• Reporters Sans Frontières statement on the assault in French
• Journalists at loggerheads - Alex Perrottet on Reportage
• 'Gang of brutes'
• Cafe Pacific on past assaults
  

Vanuatu's 'gang of brutes' and climate of impunity

DEVASTATING. This was the withering attack in an editorial by the "the board" of Transparency Vanuatu against disgraced Infrastructure and Public Works Minister Harry Iauko. Under fire from all media and civil society quarters, but mostly from Transparency (TV), the minister should fall on his sword and quit politics. But it will never happen. Will Prime Minister Sato Kilman sit up and take notice, let alone purge his thuggish minister? Hardly. His majority is too slender. Self interest is the name of the game. The Vanuatu politicians will close ranks and shield their rotten apple.

This climate of impunity in the Pacific for attacks against journalists and media is outrageous. Fortunately, we don't yet have anything like the media casualty rate of the Philippines where impunity is a national disease. The region and newshounds have much to thank TV for - tirelessly led by former Ombudsman Marie-Noelle Ferrieux-Patterson, who is just as successful a scourge of corrupt politicians in her civil society role as she was in public office. She is an inspiring example of how news media and civil society agencies can work together to bring politicians to account. The editorial began:

"The scandalous physical attack (a crime under Vanuatu’s Penal Code) on the Daily Post publisher, Marc Neil-Jones, allegedly instigated by the Minister of Public Works, Harry Iauko Iaris – the latest in a line of reported accusations of unwise or corrupt actions by the minister – is definitive proof that Iauko is totally unfit to hold any public office, let alone a leadership position.

"It is clear from letters to the editor that the conduct of this minister, whose daily life is paid for from public funds, is a shameful embarrassment to the people of Vanuatu. As a minister of State, Mr Iauko represents the whole country, not just his own small group of voters.

"If the Sato Kilman government wants to retain any serious credibility, swift and decisive sanctions will need to be taken against Minister Iauko.

"Instead of the political maturity that we should have the right to expect from our government ministers 30 years after Independence, we are witnessing the sickening display of a gang of undisciplined brutes …"

Read the full editorial by Transparency Vanuatu.

Photos: Public Works Minister Harry Iauko being sworn in last year; assaulted Daily Post publisher Marc Neil-Jones.

Check out these news items and others on Pacific Media Centre Online about the attack on the Daily Post.

• RSF condemns brutal attack
• PINA speaks out over assault
• IFJ joins Pacific condemnation
• Daily Post publisher fears inaction after assault
• Newspaper publisher to press for dismissal of minister
• Pacific media condemn minister ‘and his thugs’
• Publisher vows to press assault charges against minister
• Daily Post (March 5) front page report of the attack on the newspaper
• Cafe Pacific on previous attacks
• Join the PasiMA petition
• Tackling corruption in paradise

Ben Bohane's retrospective on Pacific war reporting

BEN BOHANE is travelling from Vanuatu to Brisbane tomorrow for an exhibition launch of his photo collective with a retrospective of his best war reportage over the years. He is without peer in South Pacific photojournalism, but his remarkable career actually began with a five-year stint in South-East Asia covering warfare in Afghanistan, Burma, Cambodia.

According to his profile on Degree South:

[Bohane] got the first interview with opium warlord General Khun Sa in 1991 and in 1992 he was reportedly the first foreign traveller to go overland from Kabul to Moscow in 80 years.

In 1994, Ben returned to Australia and began covering the much under-reported Pacific region.

He has spent the past 12 years specialising in “Conflict and Kastom” throughout Melanesia and black Australia. While covering every major conflict in the South Pacific – Bougainville, East Timor, Fiji, New Caledonia, West Papua, Papua New Guinea, Maluku, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and West Papua - he traveled and lived with a variety of tribal and rebel groups and was thereby able to secure the first pictures of BRA (Bougainville Revolutionary Army) leader Francis Ona in Bougainville and the only interview and pictures of Guadalcanal warlord Harold Keke before he surrendered to Australian troops.

He has perhaps the largest contemporary photo archive of the South Pacific in the world. His photographs are collected by the New York Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art and the Australian War Memorial.

Pacific Journalism Review published a photoessay by Ben Bohane in September 2006 (v12 n2) to mark his "Black Islands: Spirit and war in Melanesia" exhibition in Sydney's Australian Centre for Photography. His work has also appeared in Geo, Time, Newsweek, The Guardian, Rolling Stone and other publications. He also regularly makes documentaries for the ABC and SBS in Australia and other networks.

Bohane has just returned from an assignment for SBS Dateline reporting on the controversial huge Exxon LNG project in the Southern Highlands. Militant landowners claim this will turn into "another Bougainville", where a 10-year civil war was fought over the massive environmental and social destruction wrought by the Panguna copper mine.

Photo: Ben Bohane

• Ben Bohane at Degree South

Assault on Vanuatu publisher shocks Pacific journos

PACIFIC journalists are angry over the cowardly weekend assault on Vanuatu publisher Marc Neil-Jones - allegedly by prison officers incensed over an embarrassing news story. They are also disturbed over the implications for the safety of the region's media practitioners when faced with such an brutal attack by employees of a state agency. According to Radio NZ International, Marc suffered a broken nose, a black eye and kicks to the body in the attack on Saturday at his Vanuatu Daily Post's newspaper office in Port Vila. He was alone in his office at the time. The newspaper ran a picture of his injuries today. The radio said he had filed an official complaint, accusing police officers from the capital's Correctional Service Centre of the malicious attack on him. He was reported as saying that the officers objected to his newspaper's coverage of the burning down of the French jail correctional centre. The Daily Post on Friday ran a picture of the jail gates being left wide open with no security guards. A Daily Post story by Len Garae reported:

A truck pulled up with angry officers allegedly under the influence of alcohol working with Correctional Services at the prison. They stormed into the office and accused Neil- Jones of causing the dismissal of Joshua Bong as Acting Director of Correctional Services and demanding to know who was going to look after the prisoners now. A shaken Neil-Jones advised police:
“One of them was well built, strong and with a belly wearing shorts and a singlet punched me in the eye and nose and hit me four or five times.
“I was kicked a number of times when I was on the ground. The two others with him threatened to kill me because I hadn’t got their side of the story on the problems with the prison. One threatened me with a knife and said he would cut my neck and another threatened to shoot me with a gun. They said they were going to take me to the prison to look after the prisoners. It was not a pleasant experience."

Marc Neil-Jones, 51, is a Vanuatu citizen and an insulin dependent diabetic. He has been a strong campaigner for media freedom and has been assaulted on previous occasions. The Daily Post said he had suffered from high blood pressure since being illegally thrown in the prison by police after he had demanded the suspension of a police officer for assaulting his sports journalist in a rugby game between police and USP a few years ago.
After being freed, Marc wrote about human rights violations against prisoners. In 2000, he was deported by then Prime Minister Barak Sope for publishing "state secrets"- including "the news that eventually got Sope convicted in court".
Commander South Superintendent John Taleo says police are "investigating". Pictures: Vanuatu Daily Post

Pacific Beat audio: Vanuatu alleges bashing by prison guards

Pacific Media Watch condemned the "cowardly" assault, Media Asosiesen Blong Vanuatu (MAV) deplored it while also criticising "biased reporting" and the Pacific Freedom Forum denounced the "outrage". But not all media groups in Vanuatu are so supportive. A response to PMW blamed the "trial by media" style of Daily Post reporting as a source of some problems in Vanuatu. DP editor Kiery Manassah penned this "caught in the crossroads" commentary about the affair. Marc later called for a review of Australian and NZ aid to Vanuatu - especially NZ which is funding a revamp of Vanautu Correctional Services and "should be worried about how its money is spent" if officers are abusing their power.

• Publisher calls for review of Vanuatu aid
  
• Attack on Marc-Neil Jones
• Publisher assaulted by prison officers
• Vanuatu Daily Post
• Pacific Media Watch protest
• Caught in the crossroads