Everyone in the Pacific has stories of times the climate crisis hit our lives. For me, it is the birth of my daughter between cyclones
My daughter was born between cyclones.
It was January 2013, and as we drove to the hospital, we passed the wreckage left by Cyclone Evan which had devastated my home island weeks earlier. Evan had been the worst tropical cyclone to hit Samoa in over two decades. There were huge holes in the road. Debris where homes once stood.
Continue reading...Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi lost the recent election and was succeeded by the country’s first female leader, an outcome he is blaming on the New Zealand PM
The former prime minister of Samoa has accused Jacinda Ardern of being behind the recent political crisis in Samoa, suggesting she had wanted to install a female prime minister.
“I am starting to get suspicious maybe New Zealand is behind all of this,” said Tuilaepa Sa’ilele Malielegaoi, during an interview with TV1 on Sunday night.
Continue reading...Samoa's first female prime minister Fiame Naomi Mata'afa in her first sit-down interview with foreign media since taking office this week says there was 'a lot of excitement' in the Pacific nation about her election among women and girls . She also opened up about Samoa's relationship with China, saying that while 'of course we know what's happening in the global context' with the US-China tensions Samoa needed to be 'very focused on how we navigate our way through international relations'.
Continue reading...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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Continue reading...In latest twist in extraordinary election saga, clerk of the house has locked the doors, preventing parliament from convening
In dramatic scenes in the Pacific country of Samoa, the government has refused to convene parliament and allow a transition of power, locking the prime minister-elect and her supporters out of the parliament building.
Samoa’s parliament was due to convene on Monday to swear in a new government, more than a month after a knife-edge election, which has been followed by legal challenges, the calling of a second vote, and intense constitutional manoeuvring.
Continue reading...The government’s actions after last month’s elections call democracy into question and set a dangerous precedent for developing nations
Samoa has long been touted as a beacon of democracy and political stability in the Pacific, a region troubled by military coups and civil strife. The prime minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, is the world’s second longest serving prime minister, having held the office for more than 22 years.
But the latest election in the country, held last month, saw the most serious challenge to Malielegaoi’s ruling Human Rights Protection party (HRPP), and has left the country without a clear result. In the weeks since, the government has used every method available to it – and some that arguably are not – to hold on to power. What the government is doing is effectively a bloodless coup.
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...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...The most stable democracy in the Pacific is undergoing a seismic political shift as the country approaches elections next year
Samoa’s former deputy prime minister will run against her former party of 35 years, and the prime minister she served under, when she contests next year’s election as an independent candidate.
The most prominent and powerful female politician in Samoa’s independent history, and the daughter of the country’s first prime minister, Fiame Naomi Mata’afa quit as deputy prime minister and as a member of the government last month. It also meant she left the Human Rights Protection party (HRPP) of which she had been a member of since 1985.
Continue reading...Prime minister Tuilaepa Sailele Lupesoliai Malielegaoi has ruled for 22 years, but a former ally leads a new coalition of challengers
The 22-year rule of one of the world’s longest-serving prime ministers, Samoa’s Tuilaepa Sailele Lupesoliai Malielegaoi, faces its most significant challenge, with a new coalition – fronted by a former political ally – threatening his grip on power.
The elder statesman of Pacific politics, Malielegaoi has been prime minister and foreign minister of Samoa since 1998.
Continue reading...Sio Agafili was given concurrent sentences and should have got out in 2015. But he served them consecutively until a judge spotted the mistake
A Samoan man has spent nearly five extra years in prison because neither he, nor prison authorities realised that his two sentences should have been served concurrently, not consecutively.
Sio Agafili, 45, should have been released in December 2015, but he remained in jail until a judge spotted the error when he appeared in court on another matter.
Continue reading...Covid-19-related developments throughout the Pacific Islands
The total number of Covid-19 cases across the Pacific stands at 314, with new cases reported this week in New Caledonia, Northern Mariana Islands and Guam.
New Zealand is under increasing pressure, both internally and from across the region, to consider Pacific countries as part of its proposed travel ‘bubble’, alongside, or even in place of, Australia. The foreign minister, Winston Peters, initially rejected including Pacific island nations, but later backtracked.
Continue reading...Joseph Auga Matamata lured villagers to his adoptive country promising work and study, reaping ‘bags of cash’ from their unpaid forced labour
When Loto* saw the police arrive at the rural property in New Zealand where he had been held captive for nearly two years, the man who had imprisoned him there told him to run. Instead, Loto quietly waited to be discovered by police.
Loto had spent 17 months being held as a slave on a property in Hastings on New Zealand’s North Island. He was never paid for his work and was subject to cruel beatings from Joseph Auga Matamata, a 65-year-old Samoan chief, or matai.
Continue reading...Joseph Auga Matamata, who brought people to Hastings where they were forced to work without pay and subjected to abuse, also convicted of slavery
A New Zealand-based Samoan chief has been found guilty of human trafficking and using 13 of his countrymen as slaves over a 25 year period.
Joseph Auga Matamata, 65, also known as Villiamu Samu, was found guilty on 10 counts of trafficking and 13 counts of slavery following a five-week trial at the High Court in Napier.
Continue reading...Thousands in limbo around the world as vessels seek a port at which to dock
As countries scramble to close their borders in response to the global Covid-19 pandemic, thousands of cruise ship passengers are stranded on the high seas while their vessels seek a port at which to dock.
The Norwegian Jewel, sailing under the flag of the Bahamas, has been refused permission to dock in French Polynesia, Fiji, New Zealand and Australia, and is piloting to American Samoa to refuel.
Continue reading...Six-week state of emergency is lifted after disease killed 81 people and sickened more than 5,600 others
Samoa has lifted a six-week state of emergency after the infection rate from a measles outbreak that has swept the country started to come under control.
The South Pacific nation has been gripped by the highly infectious disease, which has killed 81 people, most of them babies and young children, and sickened more than 5,600 others.
Continue reading...The unprecedented health crisis has claimed 72 lives, mostly children. Now questions are being asked about how it came to this
“Every time I visit my baby, I see a morgue full of dead babies,” says a mother sitting at Tupua Tamasese Meaole National Hospital in Apia, the capital of Samoa.
The woman’s one-year-old died in the measles outbreak that has wracked the Pacific nation over the past two months. She now comes to the morgue day after day, awaiting the release of her child’s body.
Continue reading...Nation lifts two-day curfew amid rise in mandatory vaccinations and arrest of ‘anti-vaxxer’
Samoa has said nearly 90% of eligible people have been vaccinated against measles as it lifted a two-day curfew imposed amid an outbreak that has killed 65 in recent weeks.
There were, however, 103 new cases of measles reported since Friday, Samoa’s health ministry said in a statement on Saturday.
Continue reading...In six weeks, a measles outbreak has infected 3,000 people out of a population of 200,000, killing 42, mostly children
Fa’aoso Tuivale sleeps on her children’s grave during the day, when she misses them most.
She and her husband, Tuivale Luamanuvae Puelua, are sitting on the newly-dried concrete that mark the graves of their three-year-old Itila and 13-month-old twins, Tamara and Sale, talking about the week that has passed since they buried them.
Continue reading...Children under five account for all but one of deaths as 1,644 suspected cases are identified
Deaths related to measles, mostly among small children, have more than tripled to 20 in the past week on the Pacific island of Samoa, the government has said, eight days after declaring a state of emergency over the outbreak.
The island state of 200,000, located south of the equator and half way between Hawaii and New Zealand, declared a measles epidemic late in October after the first deaths.
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