Gender activist Lisa Williams-Lahari at a media freedom conference in Samoa. Photo: PMC

Pacific.Scoop
By WAVE in Rarotonga

Pacific media and gender activist Lisa Williams-Lahari has asked the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Kamalesh Sharma to push for an independent review to uncover why she was blocked from pre-CHOGM meetings this week.

The Commonwealth Foundation, the organisers, had already offered to fund her participation which would have placed Lahari in Trinidad tomorrow leading interactive sessions on gender-based violence and disability, and HIV/AIDS.

Lahari only found out about her “disinvited” status earlier this month.

After spending weeks waiting on responses to emails and questions, she was finally told her registration — needed to gain entry and donor support for travel to Trinidad — was unable to be granted because of being “heavily oversubscribed”.

“I went from an invitation, my name on a programme and preparing for my sessions in September, to a wall of silence six weeks long when I did my ticket booking and sent the itinerary in,” said Lahari.

“To date no one at the foundation has withdrawn their invite. They simply pretend it never happened.”

She said it was likely her commentary to the foundation management over the impact of its decision to suspend a programme manager active in HIV/AIDS and gender networks, and another decision to do a u-turn on support for HIV/AIDS, might have led to her being “disinvited”.

Fiji sisters
But she added this had nothing to do with her role resourcing the pre-CHOGM meeting.

“I felt disappointed because Fiji’s suspension is already taking its toll on gender regionalism for Pacific civil society networks. We’ve always left it in the past to our Fiji sisters to take the lead as they did in Nadi 2005, and later in Uganda in 2007 and most of our networks are based in Fiji. In the end, I just wished the foundation a good meeting and moved on,” she said.

But late last week Lahari was leaked proof that she was intentionally blocked from registering for the civil society assemblies.

She laid a formal complaint with foundation staff and has written to Pacific high commissions in London, as well as  Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma, to review the situation which led to her “discriminatory treatment”.

“Anyone would have expected a note to say ‘sorry, we’ve found a better person to meet our needs’. But that never happened. They just kept repeating as if on automatic — ‘sorry, you can’t register because it’s too late’ — and as I discovered, they were asking someone from Tonga to rush his details in after brushing me off!”

“I know the foundation would like for me and all this mess to go away quietly. But this isn’t about me,” she said.

“Who else have they done this to as a way of silencing people who are simply seeking information? Who is next? These school yard games are not what you expect from an organisation mandated to serve and support civil society and its own vision of democracy.

“It would be great if Pacific leaders heading to CHOGM also ask what happened and tell the Commonwealth they want to see an independent report rather than an internal cover up.

“We are talking about a global body where the Pacific is a major caucus — both at government and civil society levels. Just how seriously the staff in London take that ownership remains to be seen.”

The Pacific WAVE Media Network is made up of women whose key source of income is from work in journalism, media, and communications. It also includes student members  and affiliate membership for men and development partners that work in the Pacific region.