The Pacific year started with a ferocious eruption and global tsunami in Tonga, but by the year’s end several political upheavals had also shaken the region with a vengeance. A razor’s edge election in Fiji blew away a long entrenched authoritarian regime with a breath of fresh air for the Pacific.
A tragic day of mourning. Thousands thronged the West Papuan funeral cortège for human rights leader Filep Karma as the banned Morning Star led the way in defiance of the Indonesian military.
A Fiji-based academic has challenged the Pacific region’s media and policymakers over climate crisis coverage, asking whether the discriminatory style of reporting was a case of climate injustice.
A human rights advocate has appealed for people in Aotearoa New Zealand to take personal responsibility in the fight against disinformation and to upskill their critical thinking skills.
A new Asia Pacific nonprofit group has taken up the role of publishing the independent Pacific Journalism Review and other research and publication ventures. The launch of the NGO has ensured the viability of the New Zealand-based 28-year-old journal that was founded at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1994.
The screening of Vincent Tañada’s harrowing – especially the graphic torture scenes – yet also joyful and poignant Filipino musical drama touched a raw nerve among many in the New Zealand audiences who shared tears and their experiences of living in fear, or in hiding, during the hate-filled Marcos dictatorship.
As global tributes pour in for Queen Elizabeth II, who has died at 96 after an extraordinary reign of 70 years, David Robie’s colleague Philip Cass, editor of Pacific Journalism Review, reflects on the late Queen’s first — of many — royal tours of the Pacific and what it reveals about colonial attitudes of the time.
Frontline investigative articles on Aotearoa New Zealand’s 23-day Parliament protester siege, social media disinformation and Asia-Pacific media changes and adaptations are featured in the latest Pacific Journalism Review.
Where were the hard media questions in Suva — whether “western or Pacific-style” — about West Papua and Indonesian human rights abuses against a Melanesian neighbour? Surely here was a prime case in favour of doorstopping with a fresh outbreak of violations by Indonesian security forces – an estimated 21,000 troops are now deployed in Papua and West Papua provinces — in the news coinciding with the Forum unfolding last week.
Migrants and overseas Filipinos in Aotearoa New Zealand have called on the governments of both Australia and New Zealand to halt all military and security aid to the Philippines in protest over last month’s “fraudulent” general election.