“Indonesian hospitality was given a rave notice this week for hosting World Press Freedom Day 2017, but it was also given a huge black mark for its ‘gagging’ of free discussion over West Papua violations.” The author was one of just two New Zealanders among 1300 media people at WPFD2017.
Freedom advocates and human rights activists will next week focus global attention on the “media blackout” long imposed by Indonesian authorities on West Papua, in spite of promises to open up access to the two adjoining independent Papua New Guinea.
More than a year on from Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston — which devastated Fiji early last year, leaving 44 people dead and 45,000 displaced — a Fijian planning researcher offers his scenario around climate change. His message is good for much of the Pacific.
The blacklisting of Jack Hewson, a freelance journalist working for Al Jazeera, shows the Indonesian government’s paranoia towards foreign journalists.
In the era of President Donald Trump in the US, CAFCA’s Murray Horton provides a hard look at Aotearoa’s place in the world. And he asks the question – why are we still a loyal member of the American Empire?
The global “Free West Papua” movement, fuelled by inspired and continuous social media exposes and debate, has been growing exponentially in recent years. But you wouldn’t know that if you merely relied on the parochial New Zealand media.
Demonstrators from the Papuan Student Alliance (AMP) and the Indonesian People’s Front for West Papua (FRI-West Papua) have staged protests across Indonesia, demanding the right to self-determination and the closure of the PT Freeport gold and copper mine. This is the mine that the $20 billion NZ Superannuation Fund was forced to pull out of in 2012 after sustained protest about its “unethical” investment in the US-based company.
A survey of New Zealand professional journalists, published in Pacific Journalism Review, shows for the first time that women journalists are paid less than men, despite making up the bulk of the workforce. Female journalists, despite predominating in the profession, are significantly disadvantaged in terms of promotion and income.
The inaugural Pogau Award for courage in journalism: “Every year this award will always remind us about the human rights abuses never addressed in Indonesia since the 1965 massacre.”
Quote: “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.”