Creeping authoritarianism in Pacific not the answer to virus pandemic

The USS Theodore Roosevelt docked in Guam ... local critics unhappy about a "dangerous" gamble
with coronavirus. Image: US Navy screenshot

PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY: By David Robie, self-isolating in Auckland under New Zealand’s Covid-19 lockdown as part of a Pacific Media Watch series.

A RATHER beautiful Guåhan legend is rather poignant in these stressed pandemic times. It is one about survival and cooperation.

In ancient times, goes the story, a giant fish was eating great chunks out of this western Pacific island. The men used muscle and might with spears and slings to try to catch it.

This didn’t work. So, the women from many villages got together while washing their hair in a river. They wove their locks into a super strong net, caught the fish and saved the island.

How Ardern’s coronavirus kindness theme can become contagious

Shelf-Isolation. Cartoon: ©Malcolm Evans/The Daily Blog

PACIFIC PANDEMIC DIARY: By David Robie, self-isolating in Auckland under New Zealand’s Covid-19 lockdown as part of a new Pacific Media Watch series.


A South African celebrity jingle that has gone viral at the end of this week could easily have been a theme song for New Zealand when Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern declared a lockdown on Monday for midnight on Wednesday.

Several of South Africa’s most popular artists, such as Madjozi, Zolani Mahola and Francois van Coke, teamed up with the national groceries retailer Pick n Save to produce the rollicking “Don’t Panic Buy” in a bid to prevent stockpiling.

The lyrics urge shoppers to only buy what they really need and save the rest for fellow consumers, who may need it far more.

Chinese 'baseless rumour', Nauru 'justice' for refugees and Fiji diabetes

David Robie talks on 95bFM about current Pacific issues

Reuben McLaren of 95bFM talks to Professor David Robie, director of the Pacific Media Centre at Auckland University of Technology, on the centre's Southern Cross radio programme.

David speaks about various upheavals around the Pacific, including the alleged Chinese military "base plans" for Vanuatu, Nauru abolishing its Appeal Court in Australia, and a huge diabetes health bill blowout in Fiji.

• Stories at Asia Pacific Report
• 95bFM link: www.95bfm.com
• PMC's Southern Cross radio programme

Damning indictment of nuclear testing in the Pacific

Nuclear Exodus - Rongelap Islanders on board the Rainbow Warrior. Photo/video: David Robie

Flashback to 1987: NUCLEAR EXODUS: THE RONGELAP EVACUATION

The legacy from US nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands has provided a media backdrop to last week's 44th Pacific Islands Forum in Majuro. Here is a short documentary made by David Robie and his Aroha Productions team and broadcast by Television New Zealand.

The item was published in the New Zealand Listener as a documentary preview on 2 May 1987 before the film was screened on TVNZ's Tagata Pasifika:

By Pamela Stirling, editor of the NZ Listener

The Rongelap Islanders of Micronesia have been described as the first victims of World War Three.

Many of them remember March 1, 1954, as the day it "snowed" on their atoll, as deadly fallout dusted down from a 15 megaton thermonuclear test, codenamed Bravo, held on Bikini Atoll.

Since then Rongelap people have suffered leukaemia deaths, cancers, thyroid tumours, miscarriages, deformed children and births described as "jellyfish" babies.

A noted American researcher has predicted that everyone who was aged under 10 when the contamination occurred will die of cancer.

This award-winning, 12-minute film tells the story of their contamination, and of their evacuation three decades later by the peace ship Rainbow Warrior to Mejato Island, 150 km away. Scripted and co-produced by Pacific affairs writer David Robie, Nuclear Exodus is a damning indictment of the nuclear machine.

Media ignores major 'young leaders' Pacific politics forum

New Zealand Labour MPs Louisa Wall and Kris Fa'afoi, a former journalist, speaking about the Marriage Amendment Bill and Pacific culture in Parliament. The bill, designed to amend the 1955 Marriage Act to enable gay couples to marry, decisively passed its third reading. The MPs also spoke at this week's Pacific Parliament and Politics Forum in Wellington. Video: Tagata Pasifika/NZ Parliament

Thanks to Pacific Media Watch:

By Michael Sergel and Finian Scott, two AUT University student journalists on the Asia-Pacific Journalism course reporting for the Pacific Media Centre and Pacific Scoop

GOVERNMENT and opposition MPs and NGO representatives from 18 countries made a significant commitment to gender equality and sustainable development last weekend, but the forum received limited coverage from New Zealand and international media.

Barred West Papuan leader Benny Wenda with
PMC journalist Henry Yamo.
Image: Del Abcede/PMC

More than 70 delegates from across the Pacific were in Wellington for the Pacific Parliamentary and Political Leaders Forum, including New Zealand’s Deputy Prime Minister Bill English and other National, Labour, Green and independent MPs.

Delegates agreed on the need for greater action around gender equality, climate change and healthcare - but overwhelmingly rejected a push from the World Bank to free up trade conditions and deregulate economies.

NZAid invested $330,000 in the forum - the first of its kind in New Zealand history - but media coverage was scarce.

Don't let the numbers get in the way of a good story, Fiji Sun

MORE from Croz Walsh, this time a scolding for the Fiji Sun for doing a hack job on an "exodus" of doctors. And more evidence on how many Pacific journalists - all over the globe, for that matter - are challenged when it comes to numeracy. Walsh writes the "botched figures" items:

You can't altogether blame the moderate anti-government blog Fiji Today for getting its facts wrong when it reported: "Recent statistics released by the Ministry of Health shows that out of the 850 trained doctors in the country 400 have left for greener pastures last year." They were merely quoting the Fiji Sun. But they said this equated to more than one doctor per day and really rubbed it in by adding "Good one, Frank. You are building a better Fiji." Click on both hyperlinks above to check that I've got this right, and then read on...

The figures they cite are completely wrong, and the journalists responsible have no good excuse because they should immediately have queried obviously suspicious figures and because there were quick ways to do so. I looked at the figures and thought 850 trained doctors? Fiji only has 8000 teachers and they can't possibly outnumber doctors by only 10:1.

So I checked the Bureau of Statistics website that showed there were only 416 doctors in 2009, and as a further check I consulted the Ministry of Health's website. Their Strategic Plan for 2011 states that it aims to maintain the number of doctors at 54 per 100,000 population. This would give 480 (not 850) doctors in an estimated 2010 population of 888,000. So the Fiji Sun and Fiji Today are way off the mark.

And then, incredibly, they made a second error by saying the loss of 400 doctors occurred in one year, when the figure is for the past 10 to 15 years, that gives a loss of between 40 to 27 doctors a year. Still a large number but locally graduating doctors and overseas recruitment should make up much of the loss.

I hope the Fiji Sun and Fiji Today editors blush with shame.

And give their reporters and subs an in-house statistics workshop.

• Croz Walsh on Fiji
  
• Fiji Sun