Former military chief warns PNG soldiers could be ‘outgunned’ in Mendi strife
Former Brigadier-General Jerry Singirok, a former commander of the PNG Defence Force has 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”.
Read More →Free media week killings underscore crimes of impunity against journalists
It was the also the most horrendous day for global media too since the Ampatuan massacre on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao on 23 November 2009. A shocking 32 journalists were murdered that day … To date nobody has been successfully brought to justice.
Read More →The Ben Bohane photo that Facebook censored on an article about Indonesia
The original version of this photo, of West Papuan nambas (traditional penis gourds), which was published in the weekend edition of the family newspaper Vanuatu Daily Post and then by Asia Pacific Report, was deemed to have breached Facebook’s “community standards”. The photo was by award-winning photojournalist Ben Bohane, who lives in Vanuatu and whose work was published recently in the PMC book Conflict, Culture and Conscience.
Read More →Bearing Witness climate storytellers arrive for Fiji challenge
Hele Ikimotu and Blessen Tom bear a close connection to the impact climate change is wreaking on the Pacific region and wider world for their new Bearing Witness challenge. Ikimotu is from Kiribati and his passion for the Bearing Witness project is drawn from his close connection to the Pacific.
Read More →Flashback to the 1968 My Lai massacre: ‘Something dark and bloody’
“After the shooting was over, the soldiers went and were eating their lunch, really literally next to the ditch, next to the bodies. And that’s how disconnected you get,” Seymour Hersh, the investigative reporter who uncovered the story, said on Democracy Now.
Read More →Harsh response lessons abound in wake of PNG’s ‘invisible’ quake
It has been described by the BBC as the “invisible quake” – at least to the outside world. However, more than 100 people have died with landslides engulfing entire villages in the Papua New Guinean Highlands earthquake … PNG journalists have been doing an admirable job reporting the disaster to international media as well as their own people in difficult and risky circumstances.
Read More →Where were the Pacific activists and independent media at climate summit?
Another critical takeaway message was the vital need for “more Pacific research, by the Pacific and for the Pacific”, as expressed by 2007 Nobel Peace Prize co-recipient Professor Elisabeth Holland, director of the University of the South Pacific’s Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD).
Read More →Coups, globalisation and tough questions for Fiji’s future
Since former Fiji military leader Voreqe Bainimarama carried out his “coup to end all coups” in 2006 and ushered in his authoritarian regime, he has reset electoral rules, abolished communalism in order to pull the rug from under the old chiefly elite, and provided the first non-communal foundation for voting in Fiji. A new book assesses his political role as he faces another election this year.
Read More →UN critics join global outrage over Duterte’s Rappler ‘free press’ attack
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 President Rodrigo Duterte’s disdain for democracy in his bid to close the critical Rappler.
Read More →Three years after Charlie tragedy, ‘blaspheming’ journalists still face death
Three years after 12 people were killed at the Paris headquarters of the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo on 7 January 2015, those who censor in the name of God still pose one of the gravest threats to the freedom to inform almost everywhere in the world. From one continent to the next, calls for the deaths of journalists accused of blasphemy circulate widely on social networks.
Read More →Film industry sources criticise TVNZ ‘devaluing’ of Māori programmes
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.
Read More →PMC photojournalism book offers ‘window’ into Pacific culture, issues
The new book, Conflict, Custom & Conscience: Photojournalism and the Pacific Media Centre 2007-2017, has been launched to mark the 10th anniversary of AUT’s centre. It is divided into four themes – culture, environment, women, and politics, protest and conflict – through which the richness of the region comes through.
Read More →PMC to put spotlight on Asia-Pacific ‘journalism under duress’
Media freedom seminar: The Philippines is the country with the largest single massacre of journalists – 32 on the island of Mindanao in 2009, where a three-month urban siege against jihadists in Marawi City has recently ended with a toll on many newsrooms.
Read More →PNG activist blogger Martyn Namorong protests online in defiance of gag order
“Gagged” PNG blogger Martyn Namorong is not the only one critical of the just-ended elections … News reports mentioned complaints of alleged irregularities … such as discrepancies in voter rolls, inadequate support for polling staff, and inefficient counting of results.
Read More →Why the PNG election is heading the country towards ‘dictatorship’
“We are inching closer towards dictatorship and the ensuing bloodshed and violence that must come from the hostility towards it. But, like lemmings and sheep, we are led to that reality with little resistance at all. Is this the Papua New Guinea we all believed in once upon a time?” — Oro Governor Gary Juffa
Read More →Rights groups condemn ‘cowardly censorship’ bid over Al Jazeera
“The attack on Al Jazeera is part of an assault on free speech to subvert the impact of old and new media in the Arab world. It should be condemned and resisted.” One of many global media responses.
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