Category Archives: Pacific islands

‘Cultural rights are human rights too’: Kiribati gesture of welcome must be understood from the island’s perspective | Katerina Teaiwa and Marita Davies

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i-Kiribati writers say the media frenzy over the image of Tang Songgen walking on men’s backs diminishes local customs and culture

The image flew around the world, far ahead of any understanding of what it represented.

In the grainy picture, the Chinese ambassador to Kiribati was being welcomed onto the atoll island of Marakei. A row of young men lay face-down on the ground, their backs forming a path for the ambassador and his colleagues to walk across as they disembarked from a plane.

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Papua New Guinea bans Chinese mine staff ‘given experimental Covid-19 vaccine’

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Flight carrying workers from Chinese state-owned Ramu nickel mine cancelled by pandemic controller over concerns about vaccine trial

A planeload of Chinese mine workers have been barred from entering Papua New Guinea, over concerns they had been subjected to an unapproved Covid-19 vaccination trial before they left.

A flight from China carrying workers for the Chinese state-owned Ramu Nickel mine in Madang province was cancelled by PNG’s police commissioner and pandemic controller, David Manning, over concerns about the trial.

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Surge in passport sales delivers Vanuatu a record budget surplus

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Economy devastated by Covid shutdowns and a destructive cyclone, but citizenships-for-sale are keeping the country afloat

Surging demand for Vanuatu passports has driven an unexpected record surplus, funding Covid-19 bailout packages and cyclone recovery.

With nearly every other sector of its fragile economy reeling from the twin crises of pandemic lockdowns and April’s category five Cyclone Harold, Vanuatu nonetheless managed to turn a 3.8bn Vanuatu Vatu (US$33.3m) surplus in the first half of 2020.

Its controversial citizenship-for-sale programmes account for nearly all of that.

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‘Devastating impact’: south Auckland’s Pasifika bear brunt of new Covid-19 outbreak

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Pacific communities have been hit by New Zealand’s coronavirus resurgence – and the stigma of being at its centre

Most weekdays south Auckland’s Ōtara shopping centre is alive with the blur of brightly coloured lavalava and the cacophony of clashing music thumping out from car loudspeakers.

But this week, in the midst of New Zealand’s second lockdown, the atmosphere is subdued and strained.

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Photo of Chinese ambassador to Kiribati walking across backs of locals ‘misinterpreted’

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Image criticised as emblematic of China’s rising influence in Pacific, but i-Kiribati say practice is part of traditional welcoming ceremony

A photo reportedly showing the Chinese ambassador to Kiribati walking on peoples’ backs as part of an island welcoming ceremony has ignited debate about outsider interpretation of local custom, as well as geopolitical argument about China’s rising influence across the Pacific.

The Chinese ambassador Tang Songgen visited the island of Marakei earlier this month.

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The plastic we use unthinkingly every day is killing our planet – and slowly but surely killing us | Andrew Paris

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As researchers, we have been shocked to find the most remote depths of the Pacific Ocean polluted by our plastic. And it will outlive us all.

Another bottle. Yet another one. We are 200km from land, in the middle of the South Pacific, and this is the third bottle we’ve found already this morning.

Everywhere is plastic.

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Pacific states face instability, hunger and slow road to Covid recovery: Dame Meg Taylor

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While the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic has so far spared the Pacific, its economies are in free-fall, the region’s chief diplomat warns

Beyond the health and economic crises of Covid-19, the global pandemic has the potential to cause political instability and undermine state security across the Pacific, the region’s chief diplomat has warned.

Dame Meg Taylor, secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum, said the region’s economies were struggling with the virus-induced shocks, and a prolonged crisis could worsen existing problems of hunger, poor healthcare, and state fragility.

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New Guinea has greatest plant diversity of any island in the world, study reveals

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The tropical island edges out Madagascar as botanists estimate that 4,000 new species could be discovered in the next 50 years

New Guinea is home to more than 13,500 species of plant, two-thirds of which are endemic, according to a new study that suggests it has the greatest plant diversity of any island in the world – 19% more than Madagascar, which previously held the record.

Ninety-nine botanists from 56 institutions in 19 countries trawled through samples, the earliest of which were collected by European travellers in the 1700s. Large swathes of the island remain unexplored and some historical collections have yet to be looked at. Researchers estimate that 4,000 more plant species could be found in the next 50 years, with discoveries showing “no sign of levelling off”, according to the paper published in Nature.

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SOS message in sand saves sailors stranded on Pacific island – video

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Footage from the US Coast Guard shows the rescue of three missing sailors from the tiny Pikelot Island in the Pacific. The men were stranded there when their boat ran out of fuel and strayed off course but were saved after a rescue team spotted their giant SOS message written in the sand

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Missing sailors stranded on Pacific island saved by giant SOS in the sand

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Three men stuck on tiny Pikelot island after their boat ran out of fuel and strayed off course spotted by Australian and US military aircraft

Three Micronesian sailors stranded on a remote Pacific island have been found alive and well after a rescue team spotted their giant SOS message written into the sand on a beach.

Australian and US military aircraft found the three men on tiny Pikelot island, nearly 200km west of where they’d set off. Rescuers said they were “in good condition” with no significant injuries.

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Without seasonal workers, Australia may face a hungry summer | Michael Rose

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With not enough workers to pick the upcoming harvest, Australia faces potential food shortages, and its farmers face economic devastation

As Victoria’s Covid-19 outbreak threatens to spiral out of control and beyond its borders, Australia faces another pandemic-related crisis.

We are sailing into a food shortage and few are talking about it. This needs to change.

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Two cruise ships hit by coronavirus weeks after industry restarts

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Outbreaks of Covid-19 recorded on MS Roald Amundsen in Norway and the Paul Gauguin in Tahiti

Covid-19 has been detected on at least two cruise ships – one in the Arctic and one in the Pacific – just weeks after cruising holidays restarted.

At least 40 passengers and crew from the MS Roald Amundsen have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, and authorities are trying to contact trace hundreds of passengers from two recent Arctic voyages the ship took.

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Jenelyn Kennedy’s death was senseless – we must all ensure she did not die in vain

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The teenager’s violent death has inspired a broader movement against PNG’s endemic domestic abuse

For six full days 19-year-old Jenelyn Kennedy suffered. Her legs and arms were chained, witness statements to police say, her mouth gagged.

They allege she died from being beaten, locked in her room. Her young children in a room down the hall.

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‘Job-killer of the century’: economies of Pacific islands face collapse over Covid-19

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The region is largely coronavirus-free, but pandemic shutdowns and loss of tourism dollars are devastating its economies

The Covid-19 pandemic is the “job-killer of the century”, Fiji’s prime minister has said, as economies across the Pacific face collapse from economic and travel shutdowns, exacerbating existing illnesses, and potentially driving people into hunger.

While the number of cases across the Pacific remains low – several countries across the Pacific remain Covid-free and continue to enforce strict border closures – the economic impacts have devastated tourism- and import-dependent economies.

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Indigenous Americans had contact with Polynesians 800 years ago, DNA reveals

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  • Study shows groups crossed vast ocean in about the year 1200
  • Proof of encounter found in DNA of present-day populations

Indigenous Americans and Polynesians bridged vast expanses of open ocean around the year 1200 and mingled, leaving incontrovertible proof of their encounter in the DNA of present-day populations, new studies have revealed.

Whether peoples from what is today Colombia or Ecuador drifted thousands of kilometres to tiny islands in the middle of the Pacific, or whether seafaring Polynesians sailed upwind to South America and then back again, is still unknown.

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‘No one told me’: Samoan man serves five more years in prison than he had to

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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.

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‘Escape the pandemic in paradise’: Fiji opens its borders seeking billionaires

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Prime minister looks to attract ‘VIPs’ to help restore country’s battered economy which is heavily dependent on tourism

After months of strict Covid-19 lockdowns and resolutely closed borders, Fiji is open – for billionaires.

The prime minister, Frank Bainimarama, has announced the country is looking to attract “VIPs” to help restore Fiji’s paralysed tourism-dependent economy.

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Papua New Guinea chiefs call for halt to plan for country’s largest ever mine

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Locals say the Sepik river region must be protected from ‘exploitation and destruction from outsiders’

Chiefs from 28 haus tambarans – “spirit houses” – representing 78,000 people along Papua New Guinea’s remote Sepik river have formally declared they want a proposal for the country’s largest ever mine halted.

PanAust, an Australian-registered miner ultimately owned by the Chinese state-owned Guangdong Rising Assets Management, has proposed building a gold, silver and copper mine on the Frieda river, a tributary to the Sepik.

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Coronavirus in the Pacific: weekly briefing

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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.

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