Ukraine example cited in call to extend visas for abandoned Papuan students

Green Party MP Teanau Tuiono ... “As a Pacific nation we do have a responsibility to support West Papuans.” IMAGE: Tagata Pasifika screenshot APR

By MATTHEW SCOTT of Newsroom

Time is running out for a group of West Papuan students in New Zealand whose scholarships were cut — out of the blue — by the Indonesian government

The sudden removal of government funding for the Papuan students has left many of them in financial dire straits on visas that are running out.

Forty two students learned of the termination of their scholarships at the beginning of this year. With deadlines approaching they have appealed to both the Indonesian government and MPs in New Zealand to see if they can fix their dashed hopes of a completed education.

• READ MORE: Ukraine example cited in call to extend visas for abandoned Papuan students
• Papuan students caught by Indonesian grants cutback plead for NZ help
• West Papuan students in dire straits in NZ after Indonesia cuts funding
• West Papuan students fight to keep scholarships to study in Aotearoa
• Overcoming trauma, Papuan students in NZ now face new challenge
• Papuan students form global umbrella body, reaffirm campaign for education rights
• Papuan students succeed in NZ – ‘the golden generation from Papua’
• Mahasiswa Papua di luar negeri deklarasikan IAPSO – Tabloid Jubi [Bahasa Indonesian]
• Other reports on the Papuan education controversy
• WATCH: Te Ao Māori News video

Green Party MPs Ricardo Menendez March, Golriz Ghahraman and Teanau Tuiono penned a letter to Minister of Foreign Affairs Nanaia Mahuta requesting government to support for the students before they are deported.

They are calling for a scholarship fund to support the impacted students, a residency pathway for West Papuan students whose welfare has been affected, and an assurance that the students will have access to safe housing in affordable accommodation.

West Papuans reject Jakarta plan for extension of special autonomy

 

Papuan students demonstrating against extenson of the special autonomy law for Papua
and provincial expansion plans in front of the Ministry of Home Affairs
in central Jakarta on Monday. IMAGE: APR special

A West Papuan correspondent has compiled and translated this special article for Asia Pacific Report and Cafe Pacific drawn from Papuan news media.

THE INDIGENOUS people of West Papua have rejected the extension of special autonomy and the planned expansion of new provinces announced by the central government of Indonesia.

The rejection comes from grassroots communities across West Papua and Papuan students who are studying in Indonesia and overseas.

Responding to the expansion of a new province, Mimika students demonstrated in front of the Ministry of Home Affairs, Jl. Medan Merdeka Utara, central Jakarta, this week.

• READ MORE: More than half million Papuans sign petition opposing Indonesia’s Special Autonomy extension
• Other West Papua reports

Representing Mimika students throughout Indonesia and abroad, about 30 students who are currently studying in Jakarta, took part in the protest on Monday.

A statement received by Asia Pacific Report said that the Mimika regency students throughout Papua, Indonesia, and globally rejected the division of the Central Papua province and return the provincial division to the MRP and DPRP of Papua Province, and return the customary institutions (LEMASA & LEMASKO) to the tribal and Kamoro indigenous communities in Mimika regency.

A future in Pacific journalism in the age of 'media phobia' - USP media awards

Fiji Sun managing editor business Maraia Vula (middle) flanked by USP Journalism coordinator
Dr Shailendra Singh (left), joint winners Koroi Tadulala and Elizabeth Osifelo
and Professor David Robie (right). Image: Harry Selmen/Wansolwara

Keynote address by Pacific Media Centre director Professor David Robie at The University of the South Pacific Journalism Awards,19 October 2018, celebrating 50 years of the university's existence.

Kia Ora Tatou and Ni Sa Bula

For many of you millennials, you’re graduating and entering a Brave New World of Journalism … Embarking on a professional journalism career that is changing technologies at the speed of light, and facing a future full of treacherous quicksands like never before.

When I started in journalism, as a fresh 18-year-old in 1964 it was the year after President Kennedy was assassinated and I naively thought my hopeful world had ended, Beatlemania was in overdrive and New Zealand had been sucked into the Vietnam War.

And my journalism career actually started four years before the University of the South Pacific was founded in 1968.

Being a journalist was much simpler back then – as a young cadet on the capital city Wellington’s Dominion daily newspaper, I found the choices were straight forward. Did we want to be a print, radio or television journalist?

The internet was unheard of then – it took a further 15 years before the rudimentary “network of networks” emerged, and then another seven before computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and complicated journalism.

The digital media revolution, a free press and student journalism

Keynote speaker and former University of the South Pacific Journalism Programme head Professor David Robie with the FALE Storyboard Award winner for best regional reporting, ‘Ana Uili. David and his wife, Del, donated this West Sepik storyboard for the awards. Photo: Lowen Sei/USP

Professor David Robie's speech at the University of the South Pacific 21st Anniversary Journalism Awards on 30 October 2015:

Kia ora tatou and ni sa bula vinaka,

FIRSTLY, I wish to acknowledge the people of Fiji for returning this wonderful country to democracy last year, and also to the University of the South Pacific and Dr Shailendra Singh and his team for inviting me here to speak at this 21st Anniversary Journalism Awards event.

[Acknowledgements to various university and media VIPs]

As I started off these awards here at the University of the South Pacific in 1999 during an incredibly interesting and challenging time, it is a great honour to return for this event marking the 21st anniversary of the founding of the regional Pacific journalism programme.

Thus it is also an honour to be sharing the event with Monsieur Michel Djokovic, the Ambassador of France given how important French aid has been for this programme.

‘Scapegoat Season’ at USP fails to hide achievements

By DAVID ROBIE

SO it’s Scapegoat Season again at the University of the South Pacific journalism programme. Barely more than a year has elapsed since the last incumbent was dumped as head.

Dr Ian Weber ... out the USP
"revolving door". 
Photo: Jay Folio blog

And now Australia-based Dr Ian Weber, a colleague of his predecessor, has shot out the “revolving door”, as Fijileaks put it. He apparently resigned the same week as the journalism classes were supposed to start for the year.

His litany of complaints about the USP establishment is much the same as many coordinators have expressed in the past, in private if not always publicly – “favouritism, lack of consultation and unethical pressure” plus general lack of support.

So what’s new? Well, this time Dr Weber has launched into an extraordinary and unfounded personal attack on his distant colleague, a local Fiji Islander who is well on the way to becoming the first Pacific Islands media educator at the regional university with a doctorate in journalism.

And Shailendra Singh, a former editor of the Fiji news magazine The Review who has put in far more of the hard yards for the benefit of Fiji and Pacific journalism over the past decade than any expatriate fly-by-nighter, is not even on the Laucala campus in Fiji.

Honouring the Matebian massacre victims in East Timor

Student candles for the victims of the Matebian massacre in Timor-Leste.
Photo: Belo Dutay

By Celestino Gusmão for Café Pacific 

University students from Timor-Leste's eastern Baucau district gathered this week to commemorate the 1979 Matebian cave massacre in a month of events focused on protest against the impunity over atrocities during the illegal Indonesian occupation.

At the place at Foho Matebian on the slopes of the mountain of that name where the students lit candles, Indonesian forces used bombs to seal off the inhabitants of an entire village inside a cave with a rockfall.

Even if people had survived the rocks, they would have died of starvation trapped in the cave.
Until now, their remains are buried behind the rocks.

It is in this area during 1978/9 when the majority of the Timor-Leste population abandoned the struggle against Indonesian forces and instead took up a guerrilla struggle.

The Fretilin leadership was disorganised but took up armed struggle in the hills until Indonesia reluctantly agreed to a referendum on independence in 1999.