David Robie talks to Te Waha Nui’s Monique McKenzie about the new book.

Pacific Scoop:
News review – By Patrick Craddock in Suva

Don’t Spoil My Beautiful Face: Media, Mayhem and Human Rights in the Pacific is being published today while Fiji is voicing the mantra of the “free press” at the same time as it continues to ban experienced Pacific reporters such as Barbara Dreaver and Michael Field from New Zealand and Sean Dorney of the ABC.

Ashwin Raj, chairman of the new Media Industry Development Authority (MIDA) is haranguing journalists at public media meetings using expressions such as “…the complicity of select Fijian journalists and media either wittingly or those that remain oblivious to the laws of Fiji…”

The same MIDA that is so upset with Sean Dorney’s mild comment that “there was a feeling in the room anyway that the situation in Fiji wasn’t as free and open for the media as it should be” is also asking for “an ethos of robust debate”. Read more »

The Act of Killing trailer.

Pacific Scoop:
Commentary – By Mette Bjerregaard

The Act of Killing may have lost out on this year’s Oscar for best documentary, but it has instigated a spectacular change within Indonesian society.

The documentary, in which director Joshua Oppenheimer encourages the perpetrators of mass killings of the 1960s to re-enact their crimes for the camera, has been well received at film festivals around the world. But it is the reaction of the domestic Indonesian audience that is the most remarkable.

To understand how Oppenheimer’s film challenges the Indonesian national narrative and the public discourse, it is essential to explore how the film is received and understood by an Indonesian audience. Read more »

Vanuatu Prime Minister Moana Carcasses Kalosil speaking at the United Nations. Image: UN

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By PMC news desk

Vanuatu Prime Minister Moana Carcasses Kalosil has condemned the international community’s “neglect” of the voices of the Papuan people in protest over the repression by Indonesia for four decades.

Addressing the United Nations Human Rights Council, he said his country was seeking to “amplify the concerns for human rights” in
the West Papua region.

“We are very concerned indeed about the manner in which the international community has neglected the voices of the Papuan people, whose human rights have been trampled upon and severely suppressed since 1969,” he said. Read more »

Akilisi Pohiva … Tonga’s champion for democracy. Image: TNews

Pacific Scoop:
Profile – By Kalafi Moala in Nuku’alofa

An old political veteran is about to make this year’s parliamentary election in Tonga a final staging for perhaps the most radical challenge to the powers that be concerning power sharing and democracy.

At age 72, ‘Akilisi Pohiva is probably one of the most well known politicians and resilient reformers in the Pacific region. He is an old warrior that simply won’t give up until he gets what he believes is God’s destiny for his home country.

And in Tonga, it is to reform into a fully fledged democracy, not like the current one which he says is incomplete and will not work. Read more »

An Immigration Department official tries to block Fairfax photographing Lt-General Angus Campbell as he visits the squalid Manus Island police station prison where six asylum seekers were locked up for 48 hours. Photo: Rory Callinan/The Age

Pacific Scoop:
Backgrounder – By Rory Callinan, of The Age, Melbourne

I have seen some censorship in my 20-plus years as a journalist reporting from Australia and various countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

But what I saw on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea has made me uneasy about press freedom in the Pacific and the Australian government’s approach to reporting on the detention centre.

Last week photographer Nick Moir and I were on the island to report on the aftermath of the riot at the detention centre, which left one asylum seeker dead and about 70 injured. Read more »

The Third Pacific Media Summit in Noumea, New Caledonia, last week. Image: PACMAS

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Kalafi Moala

Media stakeholders and members of the regional media organisation PINA found out at their summit in Noumea, New Caledonia, last week that it has been recently registered in Fiji as a limited liability company, Pacific Islands News Association Limited.

Explanations about why PINA needed to incorporate ranges from the need for the organisation to become compliant with the accountability requirements of a profit-making corporate entity in Fiji, to claims that it would make it easier for donors to give money to a corporate entity.

Reactions from participants at the Third Pacific Media Summit were mixed. There were those who questioned the reasons given, whether they were really valid. Read more »

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop meets Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama in Suva on Friday, as featured in The Australian Online yesterday. Image: Fiji Ministry of Information

Pacific Scoop:
Commentary – By Dr Scott MacWilliam

The meeting of Fiji’s Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama and Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop in Suva was indeed “historic” but not for the reasons outlined in the Australian media, where the occasion was a lead news item in the press, radio and TV.

Even Rowan Callick, Asia-Pacific affairs editor, of The Australia, missed the significance of the meeting in his story yesterday which accompanied a front page picture of the two shaking hands in Suva in Friday.

Callick wrote that this was important because it represented “a step away from the foreign policy position of the Rudd-Gillard years”. Read more »

A 10-year-old child’s depiction of her “prison” in Manus Island detention centre in Papua New Guinea. Image: solidarity.net

Pacific Scoop:
Analysis – By Dr Scott MacWilliam

When relations between economically and politically dominant and subordinate countries are described, metaphors are often employed. Australia has been described as a client state of the United States, filling the security role of deputy sheriff in this region for the world’s most powerful nation.

One of the difficulties with such metaphors is that they tend to suggest a static, permanent condition. When relations change, so too must the metaphor.

Such is the case now, when Australian foreign policy has become captive to the domestic and international policy positions adopted by countries which previously appeared subordinate to the South Pacific’s major power. Read more »

The banned Morning Star flag … symbol of West Papuan independence. Image: Amnesty International

Pacific Scoop:
Backgrounder – By a special correspondent

On Tuesday, 26 November 2013, early in the afternoon, a peaceful demonstration was held to mark the opening of the OPM (Free Papua Movement) office and to welcome a campaign to taking place in Port Moresby, thee capital of Papua New Guinea, from November 25 until December 1.

The demonstration in Jayapura was organised by the KNPB – National Committee of West Papua. Those taking part gathered in Expo Waena but as they were marching  they were blocked by the police who said they has no permission.

However, four days earlier, the co-ordinator of the action, Rocky Medlama had sent notification of the action to the police but they did not acknowledge receipt of the letter, which is what the police often do to deny Papuans the right to freedom of expression. Instead they responded by using violence to remove people  in violation of the law. Read more »

Fiji economist and media critic Professor Wadan Narsey at his former institution, University of the South Pacific. Image: USP

Pacific Scoop:
Comment – Professor Wadan Narsey

In recent weeks, the Fiji print media have begun to play a more “responsible” role in holding those in authority to account as the country prepares for the promised elections in September.

They are printing critical letters to the editor, some of them several months after they were originally sent (and resent recently).

Some idea of the extent of self-censorship in the past, and recent easing may be gauged by examining just this page on my personal blog site which published the letters as they were sent over the last year. Read more »