Two damning and contrasting books about Indonesian colonialism in the Pacific, both by activist participants in Europe and New Zealand, have recently been published. Overall, they are excellent exposes of the harsh repression of the Melanesian people of West Papua and a world that has largely closed a blind eye to to human rights violations.
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.”
“Our job was to kill criminals like drug pushers, rapists, snatchers. That’s what we did. We killed people almost every day.” Allegations of a former hit man in Senate testimony about life with the new Philippines president.
The obscenity of Australia’s detention camp in Naru is surfacing again. Refugee children driven to suicide because of sexual abuse meted out by guards is about as grim as it gets, but the true horror of what is happening in Australia has infected NZ as well.