The men’s gold and women’s bronze medals meant everything to Fiji, which has the highest per-capita Covid infection rate in the world
When the Fijian men’s sevens team beat New Zealand to win gold at the Tokyo Olympics on Wednesday, the entire nation celebrated.
The win could not have come at a better time. Fiji is in the grip of a deadly second outbreak of Covid-19, on top of a potential political crisis over controversial native land legislation.
Continue reading...Pio Tikoduadua, president of the opposition National Federation Party, has won praise and followers with his faltering attempts to understand social media
A leading opposition MP from Fiji is delighting new social media followers with his wide-eyed discovery of Twitter, even as the country is experiencing heightened political tensions.
Pio Tikoduadua, who is the president of the National Federation Party, announced on Monday that while his Twitter account had been created a while ago, it had been run by his staff until now.
Continue reading...Two new payment transfer companies will be opening in the Pacific, where fees to send money are among the highest in the world
Kereni Vuai has carried a lot of people through the pandemic.
Vuai, 27, works full-time at a Sydney nursing home, which pays her AU$1500 a fortnight. She sends almost a third of that - $AU400 – back to family and friends in Fiji, many of whom have lost their jobs since coronavirus caused economic devastation in the tourism-dependent country.
Continue reading...Commonwealth research says UVI is better measure of small island states’ aid needs, especially on climate
Small island nations on the climate crisis frontlines have been overlooked in overseas aid, according to a new index.
Urging a move away from the current benchmark of using gross domestic product (GDP) to measure aid allocation, researchers from the Commonwealth secretariat and the Foundation for Studies and Research on International Development (Ferdi), a French thinktank, have developed the universal vulnerability index (UVI) as an alternative. GDP, they claim, fails to reflect the realities nations face, particularly on climate.
Continue reading...The apex predators show preferences for certain individuals and avoid others, according to new research on sharks in Fiji
They reach 3.5 metres long, weigh more than 200kg and are an apex predator. But even apex predators need friends. And, according to new research, bull sharks may be capable of making them.
A recently published study from Fiji shows that bull sharks develop companionships – with some sharks showing preferences for certain individuals and avoiding others.
Continue reading...China’s Pacific fishing fleet has grown by 500% since 2012 and is taking huge quantities of tuna
Since long before the steel-hulled fishing boats from foreign countries arrived in the South Pacific its people have had their own systems for sharing the ocean’s catches.
In the New Zealand colony of Tokelau, in the middle of the region, the 1,400 people living on its three atolls practise a system called inati, which ensures every household gets fish.
Continue reading...Hospital closure comes as the Pacific country tries to contain a second wave of the virus with lockdowns
Fiji has closed its second largest hospital amid fears that a patient who died of Covid-19 may have infected multiple staff members. The 53-year-old man was only the Pacific country’s third Covid-related death since the pandemic began.
More than 400 patients, doctors, nurses and other medical staff were being quarantined at Lautoka hospital as of Wednesday, after a doctor who had treated the man also tested positive for the coronavirus.
Continue reading...Japan’s plans to discharge radioactive wastewater into the Pacific Ocean is a callous act that would do catastrophic harm
Earlier this month, the Japanese government announced plans to discharge 1m tonnes of radioactive wastewater accruing since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011 into the Pacific Ocean.
To Pacific peoples, who have carried the disproportionate human cost of nuclearism in our region, this is yet another act of catastrophic and irreversible trans-boundary harm that our region has not consented to.
Continue reading...A new documentary shows that while the health impacts of the pandemic have - so far - been largely avoided, the effects of isolation on families, communities, and livelihoods has been profound
Faith, family, and a little bit of farming.
The Pacific’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been one of self-reliance and resistance: to turn to its communities and churches, its lands and seas.
Continue reading...Micronesia had no choice to but to abandon the Pacific Islands Forum after being ‘thoroughly and publicly disregarded’, the President of Palau writes
What becomes of an organisation when it disregards one-third of its membership? What happens when “we” stops being inclusive?
As the eldest of four, I have always felt responsible for the safety, security, and well-being of my siblings. In my family, “I” has always been synonymous with “we”, the collective, being one inclusive family and ensuring no one is left out. This is what I understand to be the Palauan way; this is what I understand to be the Pacific Way.
Continue reading...Presence of Pal Ahluwalia deemed ‘prejudicial to peace’: a report by the vice-chancellor alleged widespread financial mismanagement at University of the South Pacific
Fiji police have carried out a midnight raid at the home of the vice-chancellor of the prestigious University of the South Pacific and summarily deported him on orders of the prime minister, in a move described by students as a “coup” and likened by staff to “gestapo tactics”.
Up to 15 immigration, police and military officials forced their way into Pal Ahluwalia’s home in Suva on Wednesday night, revoked his work permit and escorted the vice-chancellor and his wife, Sandra Price, to Nadi international airport. He was then forced on to a flight under military guard to Australia on Thursday.
Continue reading...Pacific diplomacy hinges on in-person discussion but web-only meetings have fed a growing dispute over the forum’s leadership and purpose
In the Pacific, it is all about the talanoa: the conversation and the consensus.
For the 50 years of the Pacific Islands Forum (beginning life as the South Pacific Forum), meetings have always happened in person, and it is the power of the leaders being together that has given the forum its rare ability to find common ground.
Continue reading...The New Zealand foreign minister’s moko has become international news, but beyond an identifier, our tatau are a link to ancestors, a vessel for our cultures’ stories, and a tribute to those who have gone before
Shortly before my interview with six Europeans at a roundtable in Germany, I gently covered my hand tattoo with a skin-toned foundation.
I knew that without the proper context, they would stereotype me in the western sense and presume me either a criminal or at least uneducated or unprofessional. A perception of tattooing common on that side of the world.
Continue reading...A global treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons becomes international law today. But the fight to rid the world of these dismal weapons continues.
In 1995, thousands of people marched peacefully hand-in-hand through the Tahitian capital of Pape’ete. The palm-lined streets were awash with songs of protest.
On a nearby shorefront, Cook Islanders had just arrived by traditional voyaging canoe: a vaka. They were there to deliver a message of solidarity with their island neighbours, en route to the nuclear test site of Moruroa.
Continue reading...Fiji won a fierce contest to head the global rights group, but coalition of NGOs says repression and abuses domestically must be addressed
Fiji has won an intense and secretive geo-political battle to become the first Pacific island nation to win presidency of the United Nations Human Rights Council, but its ascension has come with demands from critics for it to address systemic rights abuses at home.
Overcoming last-minute challenges from Bahrain and Uzbekistan, both backed by China, Russia and Saudi Arabia, Fiji decisively won 29 out of 47 votes to take control of the powerful and influential global body.
Continue reading...Country’s expected ascension to human rights council presidency is being challenged by a China-backed bid by Bahrain
For a small country in the South Pacific that joined the UN’s powerful human rights council for the first time in 2019, Fiji has made giant strides within the organisation: right to the very top ... almost.
By consensus, Fiji’s chief diplomat in Geneva, ambassador Nazhat Shameem Khan, was set to assume the presidency of the council for 2021, a historic first not only for Fiji, but for a Pacific region consistently under-represented on the global stage.
Continue reading...Twenty houses and a community hall destroyed on Vanua Levu in second category-5 storm to hit country in 2020
At least two people have died and an unknown number of homes and buildings were destroyed when category-5 Cyclone Yasa tore through Fiji’s second-largest island Vanua Levu on Thursday night.
By Friday morning the full extent of the damage was yet to be revealed as many parts of the affected island remained without communications and were cut off by flood waters.
Continue reading...Evacuations ordered in Fiji as Yasa strengthens into a category five system with winds of up to 270km/h
Twin cyclones are bearing down on Pacific islands, with Fiji’s main island likely to be directly hit by a category five storm for the second time this year.
Tonga and Fiji were bracing for potentially catastrophic damage as tropical cyclones Zazu and Yasa intensified off their coastlines on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Taitusi Ratucaucau served 11 years in the Royal Logistics Corps, only for his contract to be terminated and his life left in limbo
Two decades ago, when Taitusi Ratucaucau signed his papers, there was such hope. A career in the British Army would bring security, adventure, a sense, too, of service.
In 2000, his homeland Fiji, roiled by a protracted and violent coup, held little hope. A career in the British military was Ratucaucau’s ticket to a wider world.
Continue reading...Judge tells eight who served in Iraq and Afghanistan that courts not concerned with misadministration
Eight Fijian-born soldiers who served with the British army in Iraq and Afghanistan have failed in a legal effort to overturn what they say were bureaucratic errors that have left them living illegally in the country they once served.
The group were refused leave for a judicial review of their cases by Mr Justice Garnham, who concluded the veterans had made their claim too late and that the courts were concerned with “illegality not misadministration” or an “unfocused idea of fairness”.
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