Category Archives: South Pacific

China’s challenges to Australian ships: three reasons not to panic | Adam Lockyer

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It’s important to view encounters between the two militaries in operational context

Last week it was reported that in early July an Australian warship had been closely followed by a Chinese guided-missile destroyer, a nuclear-powered attack submarine and multiple military aircraft as it travelled through the East China Sea.

This incident followed a confrontation on 26 May, when an Australian maritime surveillance plane was dangerously intercepted by a Chinese fighter over the South China Sea.

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Vanuatu calls on Australia to back its UN bid to recognise climate change harm

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Pacific islands urge new Labor government to support push for international court of justice to issue climate advisory opinion

Australia’s new Labor government has been called on to prove its commitment to climate action and support for Pacific countries by backing a campaign led by Vanuatu to see international law changed to recognise climate change harm.

In a letter to the prime minister sent by leading Pacific and Australian NGOs, shared exclusively with Guardian Australia, the groups urged Anthony Albanese to support Vanuatu’s campaign for the international court of justice to issue an advisory opinion on the question of climate change.

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Vanuatu, one of the last Covid hermit nations, to open to tourists after two years

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The tourism-dependent Pacific country will reopen with almost no restrictions in July, though there are concerns about lack of airline deals

Vanuatu, one of the last Covid hermit nations, is set to open up to international travel, but there are concerns the country is not ready to restart tourism, with a lack of deals with foreign airlines posing a significant problem.

From 1 July, international tourists will be able to return to Vanuatu, a country of 300,000 people three hours from Australia, which has had some of the toughest border restrictions in the world through the pandemic.

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We needed China deal to protect ‘domestic security’, says key Solomon Islands official

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Exclusive: Collin Beck, who is believed to have been involved in negotiating the pact, offers most comprehensive defence yet of the controversial deal

The controversial security deal struck between Solomon Islands and China that caught the western world off guard was needed to maintain internal security and help fight climate change, a leading Solomon Islands official has said, defending his country’s right to choose its allies.

Speaking to the Guardian in his first interview since the deal between China and Solomon Islands was leaked, Collin Beck, the permanent secretary of foreign affairs and a senior figure in the Solomons government, also said Australia should question whether it had been “fair” to Solomon Islands in its intense scrutiny of the deal.

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Penny Wong tells Pacific nations ‘we have heard you’ as Australia and China battle for influence

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Foreign minister uses speech in Fiji to declare ‘this is a different Australian government’ that will act responsibly on climate change

The new foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, has promised to treat Pacific island countries with respect, telling an audience in Fiji that Australia is “a partner that doesn’t come with strings attached” and won’t “impose unsustainable financial burdens”.

Wong promised to respect Pacific priorities and institutions as she set out an implicit contrast with China, which is pursuing a sweeping regional economic and security deal with Pacific nations that would dramatically expand Beijing’s influence and reach into those countries.

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Jacinda Ardern says New Zealand ‘ready to respond’ to Pacific’s security needs as China seeks deal in region

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Prime minister says ‘the Pacific is our home’ as Beijing plans a regional security pact with almost a dozen island nations

Jacinda Ardern says New Zealand is “ready to respond” to security needs in the Pacific, after it emerged China is planning a Pacific-wide security deal with almost a dozen island nations.

The prime minister, who is touring the US, said she believed the Pacific could meet its security needs internally, implying it should do so without intervention from China or elsewhere. “On anything related to security arrangements, we are very strongly of the view that we have within the Pacific the means and ability to respond to any security challenges that exist and New Zealand is willing to do that,” Ardern said.

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Vanuatu police crack down with arrests over ‘slander’ of MPs accused of breaking Covid lockdown

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At least four people have been arrested and face charges of cyber stalking, cyber slander and cyber libel for Facebook comments

A police crackdown in Vanuatu that has seen people arrested for allegedly posting comments on social media speculating politicians were responsible for the country’s current Covid outbreak has raised serious concerns about freedom of speech in the Pacific country.

At least four people on two separate islands have been arrested as part of a major investigation by Vanuatu’s Serious Crime Unit in the last few weeks, including a factory worker, a printer, a business owner, and a Facebook page moderator. They face charges of cyber stalking, cyber slander, and cyber libel and face up to three years in prison and fines of up to three million Vatu (US$25,838).

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Vanuatu’s push for legal protection from climate change wins crucial support

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1,500 civil society groups from 130 countries back Vanuatu’s move to seek protection from the international court of justice

Vanuatu’s push for the international court of justice to protect vulnerable nations from climate change has received the backing of 1,500 civil society organisations from more than 130 countries, as it heads toward a crucial vote at the UN General Assembly later this year.

In 2021 Vanuatu announced its intention to seek an advisory opinion by the international court of justice on the rights of present and future generations to be protected from climate change.

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New Zealand foreign minister blames ‘relationship failure’ for China-Solomons security deal

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Nanaia Mahuta confirms ‘unwelcome and unnecessary’ deal came as a surprise to New Zealand and Australia, saying the Solomons must provide transparency

The shock over China’s security deal with Solomon Islands is evidence of “a relationship failure” , New Zealand’s foreign affairs minister has said, confirming that the pact took New Zealand, Australia and other Pacific nations completely by surprise.

The deal marks Beijing’s first known bilateral security agreement in the Pacific. The text of the final deal is secret, but a draft leaked on social media in March granted Chinese military and police significant access to the country, allowing China to “make ship visits to, carry out logistical replenishment in, and have stopover and transition in Solomon Islands”.

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Solomon Islands-China pact is worst policy failure in Pacific since 1945, Labor says

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Penny Wong accuses Coalition of mishandling situation, raising concerns of a potential Chinese military presence in South Pacific

Labor has lashed the Coalition in the wake of the newly signed security agreement between China and Solomon Islands, branding it “the worst Australian foreign policy blunder in the Pacific” in decades.

The Coalition government sounded the alarm over the deal, arguing the pact has been negotiated in secret and could “undermine stability in our region”. The foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, and the minister for the Pacific, Zed Seselja, said they were “deeply disappointed” by the deal, and would “seek further clarity on the terms of the agreement, and its consequences for the Pacific region”.

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Australia live news update: Novak Djokovic federal court decision expected today; ‘difficult three weeks’ ahead for NSW amid Covid surge

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Government argues Serbian tennis star has become ‘icon’ for anti-vax groups as federal court adjourns; Victoria records 13 Covid-19 deaths and 28,128 new cases; Perrottet warns of ‘difficult three weeks’ as NSW records 20 deaths and 34,660 new cases; Queensland records three deaths and 17,445 new cases; ACT records two deaths and 1,316 cases. Follow all the day’s news here

In further Australian Covid news, the Morrison government has announced $24m in new funding to widen the use of telehealth for GPs and other specialists. The funding is a direct reaction to the infection rate from the Omicron outbreak. AAP reports:

The $24m will also cover the continued supply of personal protective equipment, such as masks, respirators, face shields and gowns for face-to-face consultations including patients that have tested positive through a rapid antigen test.

The latter aligns with national cabinet’s January 5 decision that RAT tests no longer need to be confirmed by a PCR test.

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I had death threats and my tires slashed for my reporting. Many journalists in the Pacific face huge dangers | Joyce McClure

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Freedom of the press might be included in some constitutions of Pacific countries, but it often only works in theory

I spent five years as the lone journalist on the remote Pacific island of Yap. During that time I was harassed, spat at, threatened with assassination and warned that I was being followed. The tyres on my car were slashed late one night.

There was also pressure on the political level. The chiefs of the traditional Council of Pilung (COP) asked the state legislature to throw me out of the country as a “persona non grata” claiming that my journalism “may be disruptive to the state environment and/or to the safety and security of the state”.

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How are Australia’s neighbours faring in the Covid pandemic?

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Vaccination rates are rising in much of south-east Asia and the Pacific after recent outbreaks, but some of the largest countries are falling behind

While Australians have focused on the Covid waves in Sydney and Melbourne, many of Australia’s neighbours have recently experienced their largest outbreaks so far. This includes Fiji, Indonesia, Malaysia, Timor-Leste, Vanuatu and even Singapore.

Singapore surpassed Australia’s vaccination target weeks ago, but was now seeing more than a thousand cases a day. Fiji recently had one of the highest rates of Covid cases per capita – peaking at 1,850 cases in the middle of July. But the nation of 889,000 was now regularly administering more than 10,000 new vaccinations a day.

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Even as New Zealand battles Covid, trust in government bucks global trend

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With a nationwide lockdown and some of the world’s strictest restrictions, Jacinda Ardern is counting on her people’s goodwill again

In locked-down New Zealand, life orbits around the 1pm briefing. As the home-bound nation digests its lunch, the director general of health, Ashley Bloomfield – frequently alongside prime minister Jacinda Ardern – takes the stage behind a socially distanced podium and updates the country.

In the midst of a Covid outbreak, those briefings occur almost every weekday. They are so clockwork-regular, so predictable in their essential structure, that certain sentences became memes: “Kia ora koutou katoa. There are X cases of Covid-19 in the community,” each begins. After the last outbreak, media outlet The Spinoff spliced together Bloomfield saying it 44 times.

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Citizenship for sale: fugitives, politicians and disgraced businesspeople buying Vanuatu passports

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Revealed: more than 2,000 people, including individuals sought by police, have purchased passports, and with them visa-free access to the EU and UK

A controversial “golden passports” scheme run by the Pacific nation of Vanuatu saw more than 2,000 people, including a slew of disgraced businesspeople and individuals sought by police in countries all over the world, purchase citizenship in 2020 – and with it visa-free access to the EU and UK, the Guardian can reveal.

Among those granted citizenship through the country’s development support program were a Syrian businessman with US sanctions against his businesses, a suspected North Korean politician, an Italian businessman accused of extorting the Vatican, a former member of a notorious Australian motorcycle gang, and South African brothers accused of a $3.6bn cryptocurrency heist.

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Precarious moment: Vanuatu court to rule on prime minister’s fate

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Verdict on Bob Loughman’s parliamentary boycott is uncharted political territory for the Pacific island nation

Next week Vanuatu’s court of appeal will sit to decide the political fate of the prime minister, Bob Loughman, and 18 other MPs. The supreme court ruled in June that they had vacated their seats after a three-day boycott of parliament by the government side.

Even in a country accustomed to political intrigue and surprise, it is a precarious moment. So how did we get here, who are the key players and what might happen next?

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Why the world’s most fertile fishing ground is facing a ‘unique and dire’ threat

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China’s Pacific fishing fleet has grown by 500% since 2012 and is taking huge quantities of tuna

  • Read more of our Pacific Plunder series here

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.

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Samoa’s democracy in crisis

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For nearly two months, the Polynesian island nation of Samoa has been in the grips of a political crisis after one of the most dramatic elections in the country’s history. After a supreme court intervention, a parliamentary lockout and a swearing-in ceremony unlike any other, two groups continue to claim they are the legitimate government of Samoa. Reporter Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson explains what led to this crisis, and the dire implications of this for the people of Samoa

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Closed borders and Cyclone Harald showed that locals are the best first responders in a disaster | Jill Aru

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When the storm hit Vanuatu last year, the lack of international support gave local aid workers a chance to be heard

If someone had told me this time last year that Vanuatu was about to weather one of the worst cyclones of our recent history with our borders closed, I may not have believed you.

After Cyclone Pam in 2015, hundreds of aid workers rushed in from overseas, eager to deliver lifesaving aid to communities who had lost everything.

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Vanuatu coronavirus vaccine rollout to take until end of 2023

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The majority of the Pacific nation’s population won’t be immunised for another two years, government planning documents show

Despite a tourism-dependent economy devastated by coronavirus shutdowns, Vanuatu’s Covid-19 vaccination programme will not inoculate most of its population until the end of 2023.

According to the ministry of health’s national deployment and vaccination plan, the first shots will be administered in April this year, but only the most vulnerable 20% of the population will get a jab in the first phase.

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