Professor Stephen Howes – accuses Australian government of “using its muscle” to veto loans to Fiji by both the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Image: Crawford/ANU

Pacific Scoop:
Commentary – By Graham Davis in Suva

Relations between Fiji and Australia have taken yet another turn for the worse with the revelation that Canberra has been secretly blocking Fiji’s access to hundreds of millions of dollars for development projects.

A senior Australian academic – Professor Stephen Howes – told The Australian newspaper that the government had used its muscle to veto loans to Fiji by both the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

They would have been used to finance improved basic services for ordinary Fijians such as water, roads, hospitals and schools. Instead, Fiji was forced to turn to China to secure low interest loans and was also obliged under these contracts to use Chinese firms and Chinese workers. Read more »

Professor Albert Wendt … “I owe New Zealand a lot.” Image: RH

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Vaimoana Tapaleao

For acclaimed New Zealand Pacific author Albert Wendt, writing is like breathing.

“I write because I can’t stop writing. It is in my nature,” he says.

The 73-year-old is today given this country’s highest royal honour – membership of the Order of New Zealand, a status restricted to 20 living people at any time. Read more »

Positive action to ward of Pasifika health scares of recent years. Image: SBJ Archive

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By T J Aumua

A new challenge has kicked off to encourage more of Auckland’s Pacific community to get healthy.

The goal of the Aiga challenge is to increase Pacific health and well being due to the rise in health scares within the Pacific community in recent years.

Dellas Tipau, mentor to the groups taking part in the challenge, says its purpose is to support exercise and healthy eating during the winter months which is a time where a lot of people tend to “hibernate”. Read more »

Pacific Media Watch’s Daniel Drageset interviews British filmmaker Tajinder Singh Hayer about the Film Raro festival in the Cook Islands. Still photos by Del Abcede/PMC

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Daniel Drageset of Pacific Media Watch

After participating in the Raro Challenge on Rarotonga, British filmmaker Tajinder Singh Hayer flew into Auckland full of praise for the inaugural Cook Islands film festival Film Raro.

When arriving on Rarotonga in mid-May, Singh Hayer and his crew had only just over a week to shoot a short film for the festival, organised by Drum Productions of New Zealand.

Five other film crews from around the world, including New Zealand, competed in the same intense competition as the English filmmakers.

To succeed, Singh Hayer and his team were dependent on local support – but that was never a problem. Read more »

EMTV news report on the death penalty debate in PNG’s National Parliament.

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Daniel Drageset of Pacific Media Watch

Papua New Guinea’s National Parliament has given a resounding yes to dramatically expanding the use of the death penalty, triggering international criticism.

The death penalty was technically legal in Papua New Guinea prior to yesterday’s vote, but it has not been used since 1954, according to the NGO Against Death Penalty In The World.

The NGO lists Papua New Guinea as “abolitionist de facto”, but that may change as a result of Parliament’s latest actions. Read more »

Journalists in Suva interviewing Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr during his Forum Ministerial Contact Group meeting in Fiji. Photo: Republika/Ministry of Information

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By the Pacific Media Centre news desk

A Fiji academic has partly blamed the “corporate” owners of news media in the country in effectively silencing the media in a gagged speech now published in the latest edition of Republika magazine.

Professor Wadan Narsey, who was forced out of the Fiji-based University of the South Pacific because of his outspoken views critical of the military-backed regime, was booked by students to deliver a media freedom day speech earlier this month.

But university management reportedly blocked the speech in which he says “the Fiji regime’s decrees, public stance and prosecutions of media owners, publishers and editors, have effectively prevented the media from being a “watchdog” on government.” Read more »

Part of the cover of the latest Pacific Journalism Review … the cover picture features New Caledonia. Image: David Robie/PJR

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By the Pacific Media Centre news desk

Fiji’s brand of post-coup media censorship and other Pacific political curbs are challenged in the latest Pacific Journalism Review.

“Even if the Fiji media are shackled, conferences in 2010 and 2012 provided opportunity and space to engage in some open dialogue, including criticism of the regime authorities,” the AUT-published international journal says.

“The proceedings were not confined to the Suva conference venue, or within Fiji’s borders—this is the digital age after all.” Read more »

The “president” of Papua, Forkorus Yaboisembut, at Jayapura District Court last year. He and four other Papuan pro-independence activists were convicted of “treason” for raising an outlawed Papuan flag and declaring the region independent. Photo: Jakarta Globe / Antara / file photo

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By the Pacific Media Centre news desk

The president of the self-styled republic of West Papua, Forkorus Yaboisembut, has made an appeal to three regional political organisations in the Pacific for recognition of the “independence” of the Indonesian-ruled territory.

In a letter dated May 26,  received by Pacific Media Watch, the president urges the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF)  and the African, Pacific and Caribbean group of states (AFC) to recognise his country.

In the letter, Yaboisembut addresses several human rights issues in West Papua. He also underlines that West Papuans are ethnic Melanesians, and therefore should not be a part of Indonesia. Read more »

West Papuans raise the banned pro-independence Morning Star flag at an unspecified location. Image: AFP File

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Peter Lloyd

An elite counter-terrorist police unit in Indonesia has been accused of carrying out a mass killing in a village in the central highlands of Indonesia’s disputed Papua province, according to ABC radio.

Activists says 11 people were killed and 20 more are missing after a combined military and police crackdown on support for the Free Papua pro-independence movement (OPM) in April.

The names of victims and several grisly photographs have been provided to ABC’s PM programme by the armed wing of the movement, Pacific Media Watch reports. Read more »

A patient is released from chains in North Bali by Professor Luh Ketut Suryani, founder of the Suryani Institute for Mental Health. Photo: Suryani Institute for Mental Health

For an estimated 20 million Indonesians who suffer a mental health illness, the chained or shackled conditions seen in this photo are an everyday threat. This practice, known as pasung, has been banned in Indonesia since 1977 but Holly Ryan reports for Asia-Pacific Journalism that it is still a problem.

Pacific Scoop:
Report – By Holly Ryan

The practice of “treating” mental health patients through electro-convulsive therapy or lobotomies and locking them up or shackling them to the floor, is widely regarded as a primitive treatment of the past.

However, for many of the 20 million people in Indonesia who suffer a mental illness, these practices – known as pasung – are still a reality.

But a new national programme is now trying to eliminate pasung once and for all, with the Indonesian government saying that it plans to make the training of mental health professionals a priority, and increase the accessibility of mental health services. Read more »