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...Abandoned vessel containing 649kg of drug washes up on a remote Pacific atoll after potentially years at sea
Police in the Marshall Islands have found the Pacific nation’s largest-ever haul of cocaine in an abandoned boat that washed up on a remote atoll after drifting on the high seas, potentially for years.
Attorney general Richard Hickson said the 5.5 metre (18ft) fibreglass vessel was found at Ailuk atoll last week with 649 kg (1,430lb ) of cocaine hidden in a compartment beneath the deck.
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...Residents will be able to travel between the two countries without isolating from early next year
New Zealand and the Cook Islands have agreed to a travel arrangement, the leaders of the two countries have announced, while Australians must wait a while longer to fly across the ditch.
New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, and her Cook Islands counterpart, Mark Brown, instructed officials to put in place measures to safely recommence two-way quarantine-free travel in the first quarter of 2021.
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”.
Continue reading...Isolated from the rest of the planet since February, group learned about virus sweeping the globe but have escaped its impact – until now
In February, just as the coronavirus pandemic began to take hold, four people set sail for one of the most remote places on Earth — a small camp on Kure Atoll, at the edge of the uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands.
There, more than 2,200km from Honolulu, they lived in isolation for nearly nine months while working to restore the island’s environment.
Continue reading...Five alleged sorcery-related deaths – including the hanging of a 13-year-old boy - in a single week in one Papua New Guinea province, has revived a nationwide angst over the persistent crime of alleged witchcraft killings.
In the highland villages and the lowland towns of Papua New Guinea, it is the crime that everybody knows about, that many see, but that few can, or do, anything to stop.
Those who survive it are left disfigured: limbs shattered and missing, faces scarred and swollen, souls forever damaged.
Continue reading...Optimism abounds as leaders from Fiji to Papua New Guinea welcome the new US president-elect
Joe Biden’s presidential ascension had not even been settled when Fiji’s forthright prime minister was already urging greater US action on climate change from the incoming American leader.
“Congratulations Joe Biden,” Frank Bainimarama tweeted on Saturday afternoon. “Together, we have a planet to save from a climate emergency and a global economy to build back better from Covid-19.”
Continue reading...New provincial commander says he is concerned by allegations of rape and sexual assault by officers in Alotau Town
Two policemen have been charged with rape allegedly committed inside a police station in Alotau Town, in Papua New Guinea’s south-east, but the city’s most senior officer said he fears others sexual assaults may have been committed by police, with victims too afraid to report attacks.
“I can honestly say that this practice may have been going on for a while,” Milne Bay provincial police commander Peter Barkie told the Guardian. “I’ve heard about it but since taking office I can only confirm two [alleged] cases, who were charged during my time.”
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...‘Now that I live in Guam, I cannot vote’. The first Americans to ‘vote’ on polling day have no say in who will be president
Politics is a favourite sport on the streets of Hagatna, where voters are preparing for the US elections.
Billboards adorn every street corner and conversations are dominated by candidates and their policies. But when Guamanians go to the polls on 3 November and mark down their preference for president, their “votes” won’t count.
Continue reading...Australia’s un-nuanced support for French dominion is unhelpful in a region where decolonisation is unfinished business
Kicking the can down the road is a time-honoured solution to deadlocks over statehood and identity: hoping time, consultation and money can end up in agreement.
But in New Caledonia, the French territory of 290,000 people in the Melanesian island chain to Australia’s north-east, the road is running out after more than two decades of can-kicking.
Continue reading...With a 50th nation ratifying it, the treaty outlawing nuclear weapons for all countries will come into force in 90 days
Nuclear weapons will soon be illegal. Just over 75 years since their devastation was first unleashed on the world, the global community has rallied to bring into force a ban through the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
Late on Saturday night in New York, the 50th country – the central American nation of Honduras – ratified the treaty.
Continue reading...Singer-songwriter Tio Massing writes songs from a sprawling banyan tree, and says ‘I have to do something for this earth, and the next generation’
Vanuatu singer-songwriter Tio Bang Massing writes from a place that few still remember.
He tries to live there too, with an almost Buddha-like simplicity, in a makeshift home tucked among the roots of a sprawling banyan tree.
Continue reading...With little of the homemade Pacific brew available in Australia, prices have skyrocketed, and there’s been a spike in seizures at the border
The questions are asked quietly, but urgently: “Kava, do you have any? Do you know where to get any? Have you heard what they are paying for it in Sydney?”
When Pasifika meet in Australia, it is often kava that dominates: now, it is the absence of it.
Continue reading...Alleged incident, which comes amid soaring tensions between Beijing and Taipei occurred at a reception in Suva to mark Taiwan’s national day
A fight between Chinese diplomats and a Taiwanese delegate in Fiji left the Taiwanese official in hospital with a head injury, and has again highlighted tensions between Beijing and Taipei in their struggle for influence across the Pacific.
The incident took place at a Taipei Trade Office reception at Suva’s Grand Pacific Hotel on 8 October, to mark Taiwan’s national day. Two officials from the Chinese embassy in Suva allegedly arrived uninvited and tried to photograph and film those in attendance, including at least two ministers from Fiji’s government, diplomats from other countries, international and local NGOs, and members of Fiji’s ethnic Chinese community, sources at the event told the Guardian.
Continue reading...More than 12,000 pages of US government documents show military operations contaminating the Pacific with radioactive waste, nerve agents, and chemical weapons like Agent Orange
In 1968, Leroy Foster was a master sergeant in the US Air Force, assigned to the Anderson Air Force Base in Guam, a United States island territory in the Pacific. The day after he arrived on the island, he recalled being ordered to mix “diesel fuel with Agent Orange”, then spraying “it by truck all over the base to kill the jungle overgrowth”.
Soon after, Foster suffered serious skin complaints and eventually fell sick with Parkinson’s and ischemic heart disease. Later, his daughter had cancer as a teenager, and his grandchild was born with 12 fingers, 12 toes, and a heart murmur. Foster died in 2018.
Continue reading...Mark Brown’s multiple ministries prompt opposition to suggest PM lacks confidence in his cabinet
The Cook Islands’ new prime minister has allocated himself 17 portfolios in the country’s government.
Aside from the premiership, Mark Brown is the minister for foreign affairs, immigration, finance, energy and renewables, police, and telecommunications. He is also holds portfolio responsibilities for marine resources, seabed minerals and natural resources, superannuation, and the country’s outer islands. Brown is also the country’s attorney-general.
Continue reading...The Chinese-backed gold, silver and copper mine at Frieda river risks catastrophic environmental destruction, special rapporteurs argue
The plan for the largest mine in Papua New Guinea’s history carries a risk of catastrophic loss of life and environmental destruction and “appears to disregard the human rights of those affected”, according to United Nations officials.
In an extraordinary intervention, 10 UN special rapporteurs have written with “serious concerns” to the governments of Papua New Guinea, Australia, China, and Canada, as well as the Chinese state-owned developers of the gold, copper and silver mine proposed for the remote Frieda river in the country’s north.
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