on October 16 when a boatload of 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers, all ethnic Tamils, were rescued from their sinking boat by the Australian ship, but in Indonesia’s search and rescue zone.

Initially Indonesia refused to allow the boat to dock at an Indonesian port, but after negotiations … Indonesia took the boat “on humanitarian grounds” because there was a sick child on board.

But the asylum seekers refused to leave the Australian ship, demanding they be taken to Christmas Island for processing by Australian authorities.

Oceanic Viking breakthrough: asylum seekers to come ashore

There has been a spike in asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat following the increasing violence in Afghanistan and the defeat of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka. Kevin Rudd’s government has been heavily criticised for both its handling of the Oceanic Viking incident and refugee policy in general. His stance is supposed to be tough on people smugglers and border security but humane towards refugees. Critics see it as either too hard or too soft. It’s either encouraging so-called boatpeople or abusing the rights of asylum seekers.

Veteran News Limited journalist Piers Ackerman prides himself on his right wing zeal. Never a friend of Labor governments, he rarely misses a chance to go for the throat:

The Rudd Government has only succeeded in making Australia a more enticing destination for wannabe migrants who don’t meet the nation’s needs, it has helped people jump the queue of refugees seeking resettlement and it has boosted the bank balances of international people smugglers.

Rudd’s red carpet to asylum seekers

Jeremy Sears of An Onymous Lefty is a regular critic of Ackerman. He addressed his remarks to those whom he sees as driven by xenophobia:

One of the most obvious questions I’d like to ask the “THEY’D BETTER NOT LAND HERE” crowd is – where would you like to send them?

You realise that what the people on the boats are doing is precisely what you would do in the same circumstances.
And yet you want them STOPPED. You want them LOCKED UP. You want them SENT HOME.
And the party that promises to treat these people the worst, that party will get your vote?

I’m not scared of the “boat people”. I’m scared of YOU.

Mark Thompson blogs at Seeking Asylum Down Under. His detailed responses to the current situation have looked for the positives in a sea of negativity:

Rudd is between a rock and hard place, politically speaking, as the Coalition [Liberal and National parties opposition] and its conga line of fear mongers in the media whip up the refugee issue yet again. Many people are very prone to xenophobic responses on ‘boat people', choosing to believe the fear drum beaten relentlessly by Turnbull, Stone, Andrews and Ruddock et al. There appears to be something in a large slice of the collective psyche that responds negatively to people arriving on boats.

His hope is for multi-lateral approaches to asylum seekers:

Australia must model best practice in this area, ensuring the provisions of international legal instruments and human rights conventions are followed to the letter. This can be a win/win for asylum seekers, the respective processing authorities, and the countries in the firing line. Opening a regional dialogue and developing a well-resourced multilateral approach, empowering all parties with a stake in a solution to this growing human crisis, would be a good start.

Labor all at sea on asylum seekers - but an opportunity presents itself.

Although this issue has generated a lot of heat and was a crucial part of the 2001 Australian Federal election, very few bloggers have posted about it lately. Perhaps it’s just too complex or a case of Tampa déjà vu.

That is how Ursula Rakova described the state of her homeland during a recent panel discussion during Climate Week in New York City. She has been a vocal and tireless activist to raise awareness and attract support to lead the relocation of the residents of the Cataret Islands in Papua New Guinea. These islands are gradually being flooded due to the rising sea levels attributed to climate change, and it is predicted that the islands will be completely submerged by the year 2015.

Higher levels of seawater has destroyed crops and harmed supplies of drinking water. As a result, as seen in this video produced by the United Nations University, the residents on the islands have been going hungry.

As a result, the residents, which are being considered the first climate refugees, must be relocated to the larger Bougainville Island. This complex task is being led by Rakova, who was given this enormous responsibility by the elders and the rest of her community. She has been spanning the globe to raise awareness, but more importantly, raise funds to physically relocate the approximately 120 families.

Some of the relocation has already taken place, but not without difficulties. Journalist Dan Box has been documenting the process and has been in touch with Rakova and other groups on the island, who provide updates on the situation. Box writes on his blog Journey to the Sinking Lands:

The initial evacuation (of five men, who were the fathers of five families) to the mainland has hit understandable troubles: Of the five who formed the first wave of migrants leaving the islands to build new homes on the mainland, three have returned to the islands. Apparently, they were finding it too hard living in a new place and being apart from their families. Three men have been chosen to replace them and are expected to make the journey soon. The gardens that have been planted by the original five men, however, have begun to bear fruit and veg and with this food available, the remaining two men can send for their families to join them.

In this video, Rakova describes why this campaign is necessary:

I want to make sure that my people have a future life for the generations to come. I would say to people that believe climate change is not happening, if you have the heart to feel that you are flesh and blood? To you it is a choice of lifestyle. For us, who are already suffering the impact of climate change and rising sea levels, it is a choice of life and death, because if we do not move, we are going to be drowned. And we are already losing our homelands. I think you do not need to question whether this is climate change or not. You should be able to put yourself in our shoes, and maybe travel to our islands; we invite you to travel to our islands and see it for yourself.

(…)

if they do not come up with a good solution in the Copenhagen meeting, my people will drown. Islands in the Pacific and elsewhere in the world will disappear, within the next twenty years. We will all lose our homeland, and this is my fear, that we are going to lose our ancestral homes and this is human rights, it is abusing our right to live in our ancestral homeland.

The money needed to evacuate the residents has not been coming in as had been hoped writes Rakova in an email to Box. These funds are important to help purchase land and to build homes for the residents. She will continue her campaign, when she will participate in activities during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark from December 7-18.

[Thumbnail by Oxfam International]

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) should be used to support and encourage cultural diversity and to preserve and promote the language, distinct identities and traditional knowledge of Indigenous peoples, nations and tribes in a manner which they determine best advances these goals. The evolution of the information and communication societies must be founded on the respect and promotion of the rights of Indigenous peoples, nations and tribes and our distinctive and diverse cultures, as outlined in international conventions. We have fundamental and collective rights to protect, preserve and strengthen our own languages, cultures and identities.

But can ICT truly preserve and protect distinct identities and culture? Does ICT by its very intervention introduce an element of westernization amidst the indigenous culture that it purports to preserve and protect? What is the optimum balance between preserving traditional knowledge and embracing remix culture? The cultural debate surrounding deployment of ICT in the field of indigenous/ knowledge and culture simply refuses to die down.

According to Mark Oppenneer, “the implementation of ICTs in service to indigenous peoples in development settings is a double-edged sword”, as both the critics and proponents of ICT4D have seemingly irreconcilable perspectives.

Questioning the cultural neutrality of the ICT medium, Charles Ess, in his paper “Questioning the Obvious? Ethical and Cultural Dimensions of CMC and ICTs” states that

[..]. Far from serving as value-free or morally-neutral tools, CMC (Computer mediated Communication) technologies themselves appear to embed and foster the cultural values and communicative preferences of their Western designers. As a first example: South Africa has attempted to establish Learning Centres intended to empower indigenous peoples by helping them take advantage of the multiple potentials and capacities of ICTs. A series of observers have noted, however, that these Centres repeatedly fail – in part, because of basic cultural conflicts. Briefly, the Centres reflect their designer’s Western emphasis on individual and silent learning – in contrast with indigenous preferences for learning in collaborative and often noisy, performative ways (Postma 2001). This conflict is also captured in Edward T. Hall’s distinction between high and low context cultures (1976). In this schema, contemporary societies such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Germanic countries show a preference for literate (i.e., textual), high content (but low context) information transfer – while societies such as Arabic cultures, indigenous peoples, and many Asian cultures prefer instead more oral, low content (but high context) modes of communication.

[…] Similarly, Western Group Support Systems (GSS) that favor anonymity as a feature intended to encourage open and direct communication proved disastrous in the Confucian cultures of South Asia, as this indeed succeeded in encouraging subordinates to make comments that were culturally interpreted – and condemned – as attacks on one’s “face” (Abdat and Pervan 2000). These and multiple other examples make clear that CMC technologies carry and further a specific set of cultural values and communicative preferences - ones that, far from being universally shared, are indeed limited to specific cultural domains.

Secondly, because these technologies thus clearly embed and foster specific cultural values and communicative preferences - the initial enthusiasm for these technologies inadvertently but powerfully only aids and abets a form of “computer-mediated colonization” that threatens to override diverse cultural values and communicative preferences with those defining the dominant economic and political powers of the West.

While Ess, worried about the medium defeating the intended purpose of preservation, calls for a more culturally-aware framework, others have pointed out that such concerns are not entirely correct.

In response to a query by David Sasaki, director of Global Voices' Rising Voices section, as to whether or not helping under-represented communities join the online global conversation inevitably leads to their westernization/Americanization,  Álvaro Ramírez and Diego Gomez, co-founders of the HiperBarrio project, spoke of the community adapting Western culture to their own needs, infusion of new knowledge and broadening horizons.

Citing the example of hip-hop music, Alvaro pointed out that for the community, while there was definitely some US influence, the issue was not so much Americanization as adapting something western to their own needs. So it was not only about getting influenced but exerting influence as well, giving birth to something new, new knowledge or culture. Diego noted that the project had also opened up other doors of communication beyond westernization.

I think that in this project especially they have been influenced not just by Americans they now begin to think about India, Dubai, and other cultures that they didn't know existed before. Or they didn't have much reference.

Projects such as the E-Bario project in Malaysia, Community project of the indigenous Ngalia and Badimaya people of Western Australia, the Alan - Gluban project in Taiwan are a few cases in point.

In the final analysis, as Mark Oppenneer points out

…the critics are right: misguided ICT4D implementation that doesn’t take into consideration a wide range of cultural factors and explicitly or implicitly imposes Western processes or structures upon indigenous recipients does constitute a new form of computer-mediated colonialism. And yes, the proponents of ICT4D are right: ICTs, when implemented thoughtfully and respectfully – keeping the needs of the recipients at the fore – can be powerful agents of change in the fight to reduce poverty and improve the lives of marginalized peoples in developing nations.

In his 2008 presentation, UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples - The Role of ICTs, Jesse Fidler listed various possibilities for ICT to actively engage the indigenous communities and realize their visions.

And as far as preserving the pristine, isolated local culture is concerned, Professor Amartya Sen perhaps summed it up best in his talk at the 3rd IDRC/ Harvard Forum on the future of information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) when he said that there is “no such thing as ‘unaided culture”, or ”culture that exists in isolation”.

baby by gabi_menashe

When a woman dies during pregnancy, childbirth or due to complications after delivery, it affects not only the family, but also the whole community. These videos, by different human rights organizations, go beyond statistics to tell us the stories of women and their families as they struggle to understand why it is that so many women are dying during childbirth and what needs to be done to stop this.

First, the White Ribbon Alliance produced a four minute video titled Birth and Death explaining the seriousness of Maternal Mortality and how it can be stopped:

UNICEF also created a two minute video to raise awareness about this issue, with 5 steps that can be taken to diminish maternal mortality: education, respect, empowerment, investing and protection.

In this next video, In Silence: Maternal Mortality in India by Human Rights Watch, photographer Susan Meiselas and reporter Dumeetha Luthra traveled to India to follow the story of a woman who died after giving birth:

In Peru, as told by this piece done for CARE by Phil Borges, the Watchmen for Lives program to decrease maternal mortality has proven to be a success: by empowering and educating women from within the communities in the importance of healthcare during pregnancy and by making a chart for midwives with warning signs on when to send women to a clinic - so more are going to clinics to give birth, dramatically reducing the numbers of deaths due to complications during labor.

Amnesty International has this documentary piece, 18 minutes long, about Maternal Mortality in Sierra Leone. One in 8 women die in Childbirth there: the inability to pay for medical attention, a practically non-existent healthcare system, lack of trained medical practitioners and understaffed and understocked clinics are the main reasons. As the women in the video tell: everyone there knows a woman who has died during pregnancy or labor.

And from Australia, students from the Nursing and Midwife program at the University of Sydney have created Birthing Kits that they've delivered to developing countries to try and prevent unnecessary deaths. It includes a plastic sheet to put under the mother, surgical gloves, scalpel blades, gauze, soap and string to tie off the umbilical cord. In the video, they tell of their initiative and the successful experience they've had in Bangladesh.

Babygate: trafficking children to cover demand

Malinda, an adoptive mother of two Chinese girls,  writes in her blog Adoption Talk about the lengths some corrupt individuals are going to ensure the steady flow of adoptable babies to people able to pay the pricey adoption fees. In her post Adoption Corruption: Trafficking in the news she highlights recent cases in Cameroon, where children are kidnapped in order to be placed for adoption; Korea, where young parents put their baby on sale on the Internet; Guatemala, where the army abducted and sold more than 333 children for adoption and where recently babies and children were put up for adoption without parental consent; and Ethiopia, where unregulated agencies are convincing families to give their children up for adoption, promising them the children will later return to them or that the agency will help support the remainder of the family. Similar cases have been seen in numerous other countries.

Mothers coming together to secure their human rights

Some adoptive mothers do what they can to ensure one woman's right to motherhood doesn't go against the reproductive rights of another mother.

One such option is open adoptions, a sometimes controversial decision where the child remains in contact with the birth mother and is aware that due to other circumstances, she wasn't able to take care of them.

One woman in the United States, Leigh, writes a blog called Open Adoption Round Table about the challenges of giving her child up for adoption in a semi-open arrangement.

Another blogger and writer Dawn Friedman tells a story in her blog from the opposite perspective of adopting her daughter, Madison, while keeping an open line of communication with the birth mother. Friedman is also an activist for adoption reform in the United States. She believes pregnancy counseling in unplanned pregnancies too easily pushes women towards giving up their babies for adoption without informing them adequately of how difficult it is. Friedman also recommends that the process of adoption counseling should include a post-labor session where women are accompanied through the decision making process and advised of their rights and possibilities after giving birth, in case they are having second thoughts or have additional concerns.

Birth mothers

Lorraine Dusky in the United States, who runs the Birth Mother, First Mother Forum had medical history that made her think that birth control pills she took during pregnancy could have affected the child she placed in adoption, but when she tried to contact the adoptive family through the agency to let them know, they refused to send over the information.

She relinquished her child with no particular coercion, but the laws for “closed records” in adoptions may have cost her daughter's life.

But what about natural mothers in developing countries? Where are their voices? Some of them have written letters to the children they've placed for adoption, as Pam Conell of families.com tells us in her book review of I Wish for You a Beautiful Life: Letters from the Korean birthmothers of Ae Ran Won.

Others are telling their stories through documentaries, or after being reunited with their natural children. And there are some others who tell of women who don't regret giving their children up for adoption, considering it was the best alternative. However some women, like  Malinda in the USA,  adoptive parent of Chinese Girls who writes AdoptionTalk believes that these last representations have to be taken with a grain of salt:

These representations of foreign birth mothers allow us to divorce ourselves from the experience of these birth mothers, to minimize their pain, and to justify how much better off our children are with us than with them.

The Voices of the Adopted:

Mary Grace in China by endbradley

The voices of the adoptees are as varied as any of the other parts of the adoption triad. But in general they share some points of view in common: The desire to know about their origins and the reason for their adoption and the hope that their birth mothers made an informed decision to part with them.  They also believe in the right to know their history if they choose, to know about their adoptee status from early on and have it acknowledged as part of their identity.

For example Susan from ReadingWritingLiving, an adult adoptee born in the 1960's, identified with TV drama Mad Men, particularly in their portrayal of adoptions in that time period, where women hid their shameful unwanted pregnancies until giving birth and how adopted children where seen as discards. She sums it up in her post Mad Men: A Window into my Own Past

Yes, it was painful to hear this but also WILDLY refreshing to have someone just come out and SAY it.

In the I am adopted [es]blog in Spanish, David Azcona writes about his difficult childhood, adoption at the age of 6 and the instability and inability to bond with people [es] he's felt since. It is also a place for other adoptees to post their adoption stories, and to share their experiences. In the comment threads of his about page, stories about apropriated babies [es] with no knowledge of their birth parents, twins separated at birth[es] by nurses who told parents one of the babies had died[es] and requests from birth mothers trying to contact their children as well as the other way around.

An adoptee answers a question asked on a website regarding love between adoptees and adoptive parents:

I was adopted as a baby by the two most loving, caring and supportive parents a child and young adult could ever wish for. I also have a younger adopted brother.

I don't think my biological parents could have loved me more than my adoptive ones.

Other adoptees with similar experiences chime in, some with relationships with both natural parents and adoptive parents and others who have only known their adoptive families. In this particular thread, the experiences are overwhelmingly positive towards adoption.

Some adoptees advocate against adoption. Lost Letters, an adoptee herself who writes in the Anti-Adoption livejournal community believes that instead of using so much money to aid in adoption processes and fees, it should be spent in improving the conditions of the birth parents so they can take care of their family. She adds:

I understand that my actual position on adoption is going to piss people off because people want to believe that adoption is a win/win/win situation for everyone, because people think that middle class white women deserve children no matter what, because people think that our western society is so wonderful that all children should be bought up here.

AmyAdoptee who posts in the Adult Adoptees Advocating for Change forum writes:

The adoption industry intentionally pits us against each other.  We are letting them do it.  In fact, the adoption industry gets a wonderful kick out of this.  Here is an article that supports generally our point of view but they ask that we refrain from attacking adoptive parents.  There is nothing wrong with a healthy discourse.

PhilM, in the same forum thread discussing how adoptive parents perceive them, clarifies:

I’m angry at a society that ignores the problems of adoption, and the harm it causes. I’m angry that when I try to talk about these things, I am marginalized and dismissed with comments along the lines of “well, everyone experiences it differently” and “most adoptees I know love their adoptive parents” and others. I am angry that, because I speak out about adoption, people question my love for my adoptive family. And, I admit, I get angry when individuals parrot these messages.

I don’t need a lecture for how to behave in dialogue. I need people willing to engage in it.

The way forward

As with any delicate issue, it touches a sensitive chord for all those involved: adoptive mothers, birth mothers and adopted children. However, it seems they all meet and agree on one important point: Transparency in the adoption process is vital to safeguard the human rights for the mothers and the children, and discussing adoption openly encourages transparency.

EDITED TO ADD:

We have removed a reference to a blogger who didn't wish to be quoted or mentioned in this post. To her, our apologies, it was in no way our intention to infringe on her or offend, but to provide a multiplicity of visions regarding a sensible subject.

This week his successor Kevin Rudd became embroiled in another controversy:

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd says he spoke to Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on the weekend before Indonesian authorities intercepted 260 Sri Lankans on a boat who were on their way to Australia.

Asylum seekers stopped after PM's call

Heavyweight blogger Mark Kenny is Political Editor of The Advertiser, a News Limited paper in Adelaide. He blogs at The Punch, an online venture that brings together both News Limited staff and dozens of independent writers from a wide variety of backgrounds and interests. His response was scathing of the PM:

In just one interview in Adelaide this week, Kevin Rudd used the terms “tough” and “hard-line” over and over again and repeatedly declared the Government made “no apology” for its hairy chested approach to boat people.

His condemnation of both leaders is unequivocal:

Yet there is no more pressing moral question before the world than the human rights of the forcibly displaced - some 42 million of them at present. And like capital, the movement of people is a global reality also.

The Government should now have the courage of its convictions and stare down the fear campaign being waged against it. If ever there was a case for evidence-based policy, it is here and now. That would be real moral leadership - voters respect that too.

My name is Kevin Rudd, and I’m just like John Howard

Mark Henderson, at The Australian Conservative blog, has the opposite view:

Kevin Rudd unwinds the Howard Government’s tough but highly successful measures against boat people and almost two thousand illegal immigrants find their way onto Australian territory.

… What a joke.

The “most hardline measures” involves nothing more than a phone call to the Indonesian president.

Rudd is not prepared to make the really hard decisions the Howard Government took, decisions that made it deeply unpopular with large sections of the media and the elite commentariat, but decisions that actually stopped the flow of illegal immigrants and stopped the tragic loss of life at sea.

Tough on illegals? Who’s he trying to kid?

Guy Beres’ presents his self-titled blog as: ‘Reflections on social democracy, economics, the media, and spin in an age of incorrigible cynicism’. In a lengthy and impassioned analysis of the issue he argues:

The Opposition seems desperately keen to contrast its own historical rhetoric on asylum seeker issues with the slightly softer, more humane approach being taken by the Rudd Government. Forgetting for a moment the rather ugly and sometimes disturbing human rights issues raised by the previous government’s mandatory and indefinite scheme of detention, the Opposition wants to remind us that they were “tough” on boatpeople when in government, and that Labor is “not so tough”. In concert with this mode of attack, every rickety boat that happens to depart Colombo or elsewhere on its way to Australia apparently represents a failure of Rudd Government policy in comparison with the Howard Government’s illustrious record.

The boatpeople furphy re-emerges

Incidentally a ‘furphy’ is an Australian term for a red herring or false report.

Meanwhile we haven’t heard the last of these Sri Lankan asylum seekers as they are on a hunger strike:

THE 255 Sri Lankan asylum seekers staging a hunger strike last night remained defiant, insisting they would not leave their boat or even consume liquids, despite the blazing heat.

A young girl who made a plea for asylum on their behalf has been the subject of a personal attack:

Meanwhile, the Sri Lankan high commissioner, Senaka Walgampaya, cast doubt on the account of a nine-year-old girl on the boat, Brindha, who made an emotional appeal for the Tamils to be helped. ”She is crying and weeping and said, ‘We were in the jungles for one month',” he said. ”But she is quite well nourished and she spoke very good English. She is not from Sri Lanka.”

Boat people shun fluids in stand-off

There are seemingly no innocents in this ongoing struggle. It is not an issue that will disappear soon as a visit the news website of Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) will attest. A click on the refugees tag brings up dozens of recent stories involving Australia.

Bloggers around the world are writing about climate change today, October 15, as part of Blog Action Day. One less obvious potential solution to climate change is related to the availability of contraceptives and reproductive health services. Many studies in the past few months have examined the relationship between population growth and climate change, some in support and others against using family planning as a method of emissions reduction and to minimize the impact of climate change. EJ, blogging on New Society Publishers in Canada, elaborates:

“This issue of who lives and who dies, who can have more children and who should have less children, is also beginning to raise its head in the climate change movement…

…Global population is a serious consideration for the future of our ecosystem. We have been debating this issue since at least 1972 when the Club of Rome published Limits to Growth, and yet solutions continue to evade us as we become embroiled in the emotional debates around reproductive choice, euthanasia and quality of life. The issue is so gnarly that some environmentalists refuse to discuss it.”

The world's population is expected to reach more than 9 billion people by 2050, with 95 percent of this growth in developing countries. Those in support of investing in reproductive health services and contraception to combat climate change argue that having fewer children means less carbon emissions and less strain on diminishing natural resources.

An editorial in the medical journal Lancet last month called attention to the links between rapid population growth and increased vulnerability to the consequences of climate change, such as food and water scarcity and environmental degradation. It suggested that by reducing unintended pregnancies, we could slow the high rates of population growth and possibly ease pressure on the environment. The Lancet says that over 200 million women want, but currently lack, access to modern contraceptives, resulting in 76 million unintended pregnancies every year.

An economic case was made for investing in reproductive health by a recent study from the London School of Economics (LSE) and commissioned by the UK-based Optimum Population Trust. It showed that contraception is almost five times cheaper than leading green technologies, such as wind and solar power and hybrid or electric cars, to combat climate change. Specifically, the study found that each $7 (£4) spent on basic family planning over the next four decades would reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by more than a ton, but it would cost a minimum of $32 (£19) to achieve the same result with low-carbon technologies.

Matthew Yglesias, blogging on Yglesias in the United States, supports the study's finding:

“The evidence is pretty clear that in societies where women are empowered and have access to contraception, that on average they want modest-sized families. And what this study is talking about is specifically what could be accomplished by closing the gap between the level of contraception that people want to have and the level of contraception they’re actually able to maintain. There are dozens of good reasons to think closing that gap would be beneficial, the impact on the environment is one of them.”

Still, Ann, blogging on Feministing in the United States, remains wary of the study's recommendations, saying:

“The LSE report contains a prominent caveat that this is about non-coercive family planning, but using fears about climate change as a way to expand contraceptive use is eerily reminiscent of ‘population control' policies, some of which were coercive and all of which were rooted in the idea that certain people should be having fewer babies…

…We all understand that empowering women to determine their own reproductive fates leads to other benefits — economic, societal, and yes, environmental. But given the history of population policy, to me the only acceptable international family planning policy is one that is motivated by increasing the empowerment and choices for women. Full stop.”

The New Security Beat says that countries such as India are objecting to bringing population into the climate change debate without more focus on reducing consumption in developed countries. A recent study supports this assertion. Published in the journal Environment and Urbanization, it shows there is at most a weak link between population growth and rising emissions of greenhouse gases. The study's researchers say the real issue is not the growth in the number of people, but the growth in the number of consumers and their consumption levels.

Simeon, a reader of Malawi's NyasaTimes commented on the study:

“The West needs to learn to live simply if we are ever going to cut these green house emissions. This may sound like moralising, after all Africans envy the western lifestyle and see it as a model of prosperity and happiness. We waste time connecting population growth climate change. I am happy that the study has finally exposed the lie behind this long held fallacy. President Yoweri Museveni recently at the United Nations asked a very tough question: ‘If the whole world were to have access to the western lifestyle, would the planet be able to support us?' I see that in the years to come the concept of development needs to be seriously reviewed and changed. Maybe to develop may mean living healthily and not necessary having everything”

Ruth Limkin, a pastor blogging from Australia, says maybe we should take a different approach altogether, where people are the solution and not the problem:

“What if we invested in innovation and respected reproduction?

The inherent potential in humanity itself is stunning if ever appreciated in its breadth and depth. The genesis of a truly great, revolutionary idea for energy generation, for agricultural technology, for waste reduction or for recycling methods may lie in the person you met yesterday.

Or it may lie in the fourth child of a family in Africa or India. What if, instead of controlling population, we created opportunities for education, established cultures of creativity and encouraged responsible, careful use of the natural resources around us?”

Photo of Friendly Condoms by Alaskan Dude on Flickr, Creative Commons.

On one hand, the traditions encapsulated in indigenous knowledge are culturally unique, using local understanding to solve local problems. This makes it an important component in the fields of ecology, education, agriculture and health security. On the other hand, the internet is lauded for spreading information to help people, but it is also a bazaar, tilted towards large corporations and the economies of scale: Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft, PayPal. Indigenous knowledge has certain spiritual and ceremonial components; the internet is largely agnostic, and makes a good deal of money peddling pornography.

For all their perceived differences, the indigenous knowledge and global knowledge systems have become much closer in the past decade. Indigenous knowledge practitioners have begun leveraging different media to exchange ideas and publicize traditional learning to the larger world.

A researcher in Ethiopia argues Internet and Communication Technologies, called ICTs, can be used as cheap methods to capture, store and disseminate various forms of indigenous knowledge for future generations.

ICTs also increase access to indigenous knowledge systems, especially to schools, where this learning can be incorporated into classrooms.

Moving into education systems

As stated above, ICTs provide a perfect example for integrating indigenous knowledge into both formal and informal education systems. Technology could facilitate disseminating ideas about local cultures to students and provide schools the possibility to teach some curriculum in a local language.

Before we get into specific examples, let’s follow this debate with two bloggers on the importance of making students aware of different knowledge systems. For one, does increasing access to traditional knowledge give it more credibility in the eyes' of students?

Perhaps. George Sefa Dei, at The Freire Project blog, argues that in both development and education issues, scholars and practitioners need to find a balance between tradition and modernity.

Students have often queried why and how is it that certain knowledges count more so than other ways of knowing. There is a realization on the part of learners that knowledge is operationalized differently given local histories, environments and contexts. Unfortunately, the processes of validating knowledges fail to take into account this multiplicity of knowings that can together comprehensive speak to the diversity of the histories of ideas and events that have shaped and continue to shape human growth and development. In questioning the hierarchy of knowledges learners also allude to the problematic position of neutral, apolitical knowledge. It is important then in our teaching of Africa we lay bare and grasp the processes through which for example, Western science knowledge positions itself as neutral, universal and non-hegemonic ways of knowing, and furthermore seeks to invalidate and devalue other ways of knowing.

This sounds good in theory. How well does it work in practice?

Passionate Pedagogue, in a comment to the above post, illustrates a major hurdle.

I spend hours combing the Internet looking for sites about the peoples I teach in my history classes written by the peoples I teach. Oftentimes the sites I locate are too complicated or tacit for students to understand. Other times, the sites (rightfully so) are so culturally-specific that a teenager with no cultural capital about the area or peoples involved cannot possibly understand them. This leaves little actual “indigenous” information that is accessible to students.

I trust that during my career as a teacher critical pedagogues will work to create student-centered access to indigenous knowledge. My hope is that the information that we gleam from the invaluable contributions of indigenous peoples does not become relegated to university sociology textbooks or primers in critical pedagogy. While it is of course wonderful for graduate students and academics to take the lessons that Native Peoples the world over have to offer to heart, perhaps we should be weary of becoming Napoleon’s in our own right; publishing surveys of Native history by Natives that only serve the higher echelons of academia.

Where there are no sources

When finding source material becomes too difficult, some teachers have decided to make their own. Here are two examples of projects where technology can be a boon for students learning about different cultures. The first comes from Australia, from Scot Aldred, who writes the blog e-learning.

Specifically, I'm interested in developing a WIKI section devoted to indigenous Australians; their diverse culture, history, language and their land. While there is some publicly available information in hard copy publications, it is not substantial and does not detail all of Australian indigenous nations and their people. Online the situation is much worse with very little accurate information available.
Just imagine if all of Australia's school students had an opportunity to contribute to a public WIKI with information about the indigenous people native to their geographical area. Much of Australia's indigenous history is passed down by an oral tradition of story telling. The old people, the elders and some historians have information that could be shared with all Australians and the world.

… What about having a shared Webspace available to all of Australia's schools (public and private) where schools would submit a list of eligible persons who could create content and collaborate. Additional roles/permissions for moderators who would again be nominated by the schools.

A comment from Ginga, who is from the American state of Alaska.

Your ideas on collecting indigenous knowledge, and sharing it with the world in a collaborative environment (wikis and more) run parallel to several projects happening in the Bering Strait School District in northern Alaska.

Our staff and students are creating wiki-dictionaries in Inupiaq, and Siberian Yupik to document the native languages in our area. Students post a sound file, local image, and other information they have collected. We're also trying to develop other projects that have flexible formats for student sharing and collaboration on our wiki.

The tower of Chinglish?

At least one expert argues that with all the promise of ICTs, many traditional organizations feel they get lost in the “overload” of the Internet. Their websites lag in search engine relevance and (sometimes) lack a polished feel.

One problem is language. It is hard for a website written in say, Greenlandic (spoken in Greenland) or Cha'palaa, a language from Ecuador, or Bisaya, from the Philippines, to compete for page views with websites written in Spanish, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese or Arabic. Translating pages is often difficult and time consuming.

However, ICTs have the potential to expand a language’s reach. Perhaps it is through online classes or through tutorials or small applications for phones and computers. This is especially important because of the sometimes-frail environment indigenous languages now live.

Here is a good discussion of the issues surrounding language and technology from Heather, who lives in the US and blogs at flex your info. She brings up the fact that technology may provide a good means to communicate for members of her tribe living in distant places. However, “[t]echnology can be put to even better uses: cultural revitalization and preservation.” This does come with its own share of issues.

Native languages have long been endangered by a combination of urbanization and modernization, as well as past governmental policies of removal, relocation, and termination of native populations.

Today’s technology is such that you can easily record information and make long-distance contact with others, so it seems as if it should be easy to record, preserve, and make available native language information. However, there are a number of other concerns which must be balanced with the urge to preserve language through recordings, primarily issues around ownership and access. Language is closely tied to culture; even if tribal members don’t use their language day-to-day, they probably use in their ceremonies. Language and ceremonies may only be shared with certain people: sometimes with all members of the tribe, other times with only a select few. There may be people who are protectors of knowledge, language or otherwise. It’s important to make sure that programs created to record and preserve languages are sensitive to these issues.

Another issue to be considered is misappropriation or exploitation of this information. Indeed, some tribal elders have chosen to not share their knowledge with non-tribal members; by recording it, the chance that an outsider will access the information increases. Not recording such information allows tribal members to retain control over their cultural information. Another way to maintain control is to closely involve tribal members and elders in the design and creation of preservation programs. As more Natives become involved in the work to preserve their languages, they inform the protocols and practices used to collect and make available information. Whether a tribe decides to record and preserve language or to continue to share it only with tribal members orally, their positions must be respected.

Language learning on the telephone

With this in mind, she announces a new application for a mobile phone system that will teach the language of the Cherokee Nation, originally from the southeastern part of the United States but in the 1830s forcibly removed by the US government to the center of the country.

…The application includes flashcards, recordings, and games for language learning, and there is also a version for the Nintendo DS. The idea of using popular technology to help preserve and revitalize languages is exciting, because it makes language information available to all tribal members, not just those who live near tribal lands, and in a way that can be easily integrated into their lives.

…The use of technology, such as the Cherokee language iPhone application, can help dispersed tribal members to learn their tribe’s language. Software can be used to create multimedia teaching materials for lessons, while web conferencing technology can be used for teaching and for oral practice with other speakers. However, such programs must be sensitive to the issues of control and access by closely involving tribal members and elders, and respecting their wishes.

floods

In less than a week, earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons have struck several different countries in Oceania, East and Southeast Asia.

Previous Global Voices posts have kept us informed about what is going on at ground level in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Philippines, Vietnam with Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy) and about the series of strong earthquakes in Indonesia (1 and 2) just a day after the Samoa Earthquake which triggered a tsunami.

Through video uploading platforms, citizens who are experiencing these natural disasters and their aftermath have shared their video clips, so that people from other regions can identify the extent of the damages.

YouTube's CitizenTube blog have written a couple of posts regarding these events. This first one has a playlist of clips of the Samoa Earthquake and Tsunami aftermath:

And this other post has several videos of the aftermath of the Sumatran earthquake.

This one has families outside their homes, running to grab railings in case there's an aftershock:

This other shows a street view of what seems to be a shopping center with extensive damage and an area on fire:

This next video regards Typhoon (Ketsana) Ondoy, which hit the Philippines. In it you can see the extensive flooding, and the cameraman writes this in his description:

I just got back from the river's edge 5 minutes ago. A 10-15 feet height differential between the Marikina River and the embankment has now been reduced to the point that water is splashing against the high-rises of Eastwood, Metro Manila. A security guard for this sealed off area approaches me and covers me with his umbrella while I snap pictures from my phone. “Where are the police or firemen?” I asked. He first points at a speck in the middle of the river 300-400 meters out to my right. “That was a woman with her 2 year old infant clinging on to her. She passed through here in the middle of the river - waving at us for help. There was nothing we could do - she had passed though within 5 seconds. We've been seeing other people washed away.” We watched helplessly at the 20+ people 200 meters away that are now sitting on top of their corrugated roof-tops as the river rages beneath them on their submerged homes… waiting for emergency personnel yet to come.

This video, also about the flooding, shows a different face to the emergency, in the rapidly rising waters, a group of children can be seen playing and enjoying themselves:

It seems that humor has become one of the ways to cope with natural disasters for Filipinos. For example, in this blog post a message by Gwendolyn So is reposted, where she tells of her 10+ years experiencing flooding in her home at least once a year, you can see that even in the midst of trying to rescue furniture, goods and family, there is a space for having fun:

5. You can have fun in the midst of disaster so I took out our cameras and starting taking pictures. It was to make everyone have a good laugh as we surveyed the chaos around us, the cockroaches and rats swimming by, the black inky spots of oily stuff occasionally floating around.

At the end, she puts things in perspective:

It is easy to go insane after this kind of calamity, to despair of the material things we lost (especially the cars), but please be thankful you got away with your life and that of your family and loved ones

Image used to illustrate post by IronChefBalara according to CC attribution license

Shortly before 7 am local time Wednesday, September 30, an earthquake measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale hit 120 miles off Apia, Samoa’s capital. Almost immediately giant waves at least twenty feet high hit both countries.

The shockwaves immediately spread across the Pacific, where governments and media scrambled to warn citizens – especially those who work on the water or those attending school or living in low-lying areas. Because of the nature of tsunamis (they can travel about 500 miles — 800 km — per hour), and the great distances in the Pacific, some people had to wait nearly three hours anticipating tsunami-like waves.

However, nothing measuring the damage in Samoa or American Samoa was reported. Eastern islands in the Fiji group reported waves over one-foot high just 30 minutes after the earthquake. New Zealand, some 1800 miles from the epicenter, reported waves at 40 cm, or 15 inches.

From footage by a cameraman named Rayner W, who took a walking tour of the damage in Leone, American Samoa.

Erica Wales, a Peace Corps volunteer in Salesatele, Samoa, is lucky to be alive.

From the blog Peace Corps Adventures in Samoa:

I was sleeping when the 8.0 earthquake hit. My house started shaking and things were falling off shelves. Books fell down, the phone mounted on my wall fell down, cans of food fell…I’m smart enough to know when things start falling it is probably wise to get out. So grabbed my phone and left my room. The shaking lasted a long time too, at least a minute. I texted a good friend here with the message of “shit that was big” when it was over. She agreed. About that time I got a call from the Peace Corps medical officer that I should probably move inland because the possibility of a tsunami. So I grabbed an ie and left.

I was walking on the road which parallels the beach when I noticed something wasn’t right. I could see structures like rocks and coral which I have never seen above water, not even at the lowest of low tides. This didn’t bode well. Then I noticed the really odd wave action, something just wasn’t right. I had just turned the corner of the road and was now headed inland, versus parallel to the beach as I had been just one minute before, when the waves hit the beach and surged up the road. At this point I started running, as did my village. As I was running I could hear the water surging up the river, tearing trees down.

I got up to the main road where most everyone was. The matai were directing everyone to head to Siuniu, the village inland. I could see the look of panic and worry as parents asked where their kids were, for they were headed to the primary school which is near me. The matai were organized and knew where to direct the parents to in order to find their kids. I went up to Siuniu and waited with my village. At this point we were getting reports of a school in Poutasi (a few villages to the west) collapsing and killing three kids. Everyone was on phones, calling relatives and friends in neighboring villages, trying to find out what was going on. Reports came that 50 people in Poutasi were dead, buried in the sand. A boy in neighboring Salani died. And 15 in Aleipata were dead. As far as I know at this point, no one in my village died. We are lucky.

Then, she adds, almost in passing:

Then I got a report that my house and another were destroyed. I wanted to go and see if this was true, but I knew to stay. I waited a few hours then went to see what the damage was. Sure enough, my house was flattened. The tsunami ripped the house from its foundation and deposited it 10 feet in front of the house, collapsed beyond repair. I could see all of my stuff waterlogged and muddy. I’m not sure what can be salvaged. I’m going back tomorrow to find out what I can still use, but I know most things will be trashed.

Matt, another Peace Corps volunteer, was posting throughout the day. He takes us through the hurry-up-and-wait reality that often goes along with a natural disaster.

From Matt’s Samoa Blog:

About 8 minutes ago, we just had a big earthquake. Big. No information yet on the exact magnitude, but it was quite long and certainly big enough to knock over stuff around my house. I'm guessing it was at least a 6.0 on account of the stuff flying about. About 40 seconds in, I grabbed my laptop because I was afraid the cinderblock shelf was going to fall on top of it. The quake went on and on and on to the point it felt like it was continuously shaking into the aftershock phase. And we've had a couple aftershocks already.
…
Most of Apia evacuated to higher ground. Uphill roads became one-way highways for cars and buses, but most of us just walked. Tsunami sirens blared across Apia. Church bells rang. My school rang its bell. The Peace Corps sent out mass text messages, which they followed up with phone calls to make sure everyone was heading inland.

I walked with a couple girls from my 11.3 class and held an impromptu geology lesson.

There was much confusion as to where we were supposed t go and where we could stop. Students asked me where we were going, and I could only tell them we were going “Up.” A couple teachers also asked me. “I was following you,” I said.

Eventually I setup camp with a bunch of year 13s where we had plain sight of the ocean. We hung out in the shade, and my cell phone got passed around.

After about an hour some people started heading back downhill, but most of us stayed in place. I wanted to get clear word from the Peace Corps before I left. And then I did.
…
News is sketchy. It sounds like the south, and particularly the southeast, parts of Upolu were most affected. It's difficult to know whether the damage was caused by the quake itself or the subsequent rising water levels. I've also heard the number of fatalities is 14, although it was unclear if that was for Samoa or American Samoa.

Then, Matt provides an inventory of damage to his friends' houses.

I just talked to Asolima and she said Fausaga is okay. They have a marshy inlet that separates the village from the ocean, so it was able to blunt the effects of the rising tide. Nonetheless, many of the families have retreated inland to the more elevated maumaga. As I was on the phone with Asolima, she said the radio was broadcasting new tsunami warnings and they would probably head up the mountain once more. She added they'd probably sleep there.

Much of Fausaga's neighboring village, Tafitoala, sits along the ocean and was badly hit. Much of the Tafitoala Beach Fales have been wiped out as well as a bunch of the other houses along the beach. Neighboring beach resorts, including Sinalei and Coconuts, were also badly hit.

Koa is fine. He lives on the north side of the island and everything in his village is mostly back to normal. Supy evacuated with Dan and Paul and spent the morning drinking niu. He said the water level rose, but his village came through unharmed. Phil lives right on the water, but said the water didn't come onto land. Paul and Dan's village suffered minor damage, and a woman reportedly died from a heart attack.

I've heard Erin's village may have seen a 20-foot wave. That estimate is based on boats lying 200 meters inland. The secondary school in her village collapsed.

Another Peace Corps volunteer returns to her work the day after and learns some bad news. From the blog See Reeves:

I was up at 6 am as usual and saw the neighbors returning home (the entire family had mysteriously packed up and left the house at 10 pm last night). I went over to ask if their family was ok. The neighbor also happens to be the director of the school board, so I asked if school was still on for today. He said yes. So I responded to the numerous emails filling my inbox, took a shower and went to school.

I knew right away that there were not going to be classes. The student population, usually more than 600, had dropped to less than 100 students. Every student and teacher I passed on the walk up the school drive, I asked if their families were ok. Moleli, the P.E. instructor, had lost three members of his extended family. Every one expressed their happiness to see me and their concern for me yesterday. I had hightailed it out of town the minute we got the Peace Corps evacuate message, which was before I had ever made it to school that day. The other teachers had worried about me.

When the evacuation order had come, the school principal and three of the teachers had filled vehicles with students to drive them inland. While they were up the hill a parent of a Year 9 girl student had arrived in a van and picked up nine students to drive inland. On the way up the hill something happened with the van, it lost power and all breaks. The car began to roll down the hill backwards. The driver turned the wheel, thinking he should be facing the way the van was rolling. This sent the van flipping side over side down the hill. All nine students were taken to the hospital and one student, the driver of the van's own daughter, was killed in the accident.

Moleli had transported the students to the hospital himself and sat with them for hours, refusing medical attention for an injury to his head until every student had been seen. He was extremely touched by the concern of visiting medical volunteers, Germaine and Imogen (possibly from Ireland or Scotland). Reaching into his pocket he produced the scrap of paper that contained their cell phone number. He told me he had called them later that night and had spoken with them for nearly two hours.

Talking to the teachers I could sense the raw emotion just under the surface. They were tired and frayed around the edges. Samoa had just experienced the most devastating natural disaster in recent history. Even the cyclones of the early 90's had not claimed as many lives (death toll numbers still vary widely).

“Samoa will remember this day in her heart for ever,” said Moleli.

According to an article in Australian newspaper, The Age, Grace Gichuhi, 22, and Teresia Ndikaru Muturi, 21, arrived in Australia in July last year on tourist visas for World Youth Day.

There have been few reactions to the case from most of the political blogosphere regulars in Australia. Climate change and economic stimulus strategies have dominated in the last week.

But the article on The Age has attracted 54 comments from online readers showing anything but popular disinterest. The comments represent opposite poles of opinion, including:

Let these women stay.

Ben | Adelaide - September 22, 2009, 9:30AM

They applied. Their applications were assessed. Their applications were refused.
Send them home.
Case closed.

David_T - September 22, 2009, 9:34AM

How pathetic that these two women should be refused asylum. Australia could do well to have more people like these two girls and as far as I'm concerned they're welcome here for as long as they wish.

jollysroger | Townsville - September 22, 2009, 10:22AM

On her blog, at Pocket Carnival, Penny Eager says she was moved to write to the Minister for Immigration & Citizenship, Chris Evans on his online contact page, expressing her outrage:

I have just heard of the case of Grace Gichuhi & Teresia Ndikaru Muturi, two women from Kenya who have been denied status as refugees.

I believe that the torturous practise of genital mutilation is abhorrent, and that to deny these women refugee visas is to take a weak stance on this issue.

I urge you to intervene in this case, not only to help these women, but also to send a clear message to Kenya that Australia does not condone these practises.

A religious issue?

Aussie News and Views a self-styled “American, Australian, Israeli, British ‘Judeo-Christian Friendly' blog” posted a video of a news clip about the women and asked:

Gee I wonder who could be behind this? what sort of Satan worshipping Death Cult could be alive and well in Kenya today that would do such a thing to young women?

Philip Maguire at Whaddya Reckon? drew a number of comments with his post:

TWO Kenyan Christian women are to be deported from Australia despite facing death or genital mutilation.

Maybe they should have arrived here cashed up via a boat from Indonesia.

Lisa Valentine of Embrace Australia, an online community for foreign nationals looking to live in Australia, also took up their case:

Both Grace and Teresia are now terrified of what fate will lie in wait for them if they are deported back to Kenya.

A spokesman from the Australian Immigration Department said: “Under the refugee convention, they weren’t found to engage with Australia’s international obligations.

The girls, along with Sister Aileen Crowe, a Franciscan nun who is supporting them, launched an appeal to the Australian Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, but he rejected that appeal. A second appeal has now been launched and the girls are awaiting the results but have been told to prepare for deportation.

Ironically new legislation is due to be introduced to Parliament that would ensure protection for the girls. The legislation is called Complementary Protection and it expands the criteria under which a refugee can apply for protection.

Online campaign

On Facebook a ‘Causes' page titled Help save these Women from Genital Mutilation has been launched by Australians who support the women's attempt to stay in Australia. So far, 91 people have joined. An update was posted on Tuesday by Vanessa Muradian:

This is the most recent update - sources said these women are protected here in Australia — until Evans decides what to do with them. Whether he rejected them or not the first time we are still to know… the government need to pass the complimentary visa… which I am further researching at the moment - Basically the complimentary visa, will ‘compliment' the protection visa, SO THAT THESE refugees can fall under a protection visa. CURRENTLY the protection visa doesn't protect women from GENITAL MUTILATION and honour killings. The bill was proposed to parliament in September and currently the Liberal party are opposing this bill…

Right now these women just need our support - Minister Evans will be making the decision with his privilege of Ministerial Intervention.

I guess we need to contact him…

As well as other governing bodies whom can help the government pass the complimentary bill!!!!!!!

Bloggers in Fiji and around the Pacific are debating a recent Amnesty International report chronicling the island nation’s human rights record since the country’s president abrogated the constitution April 10.

The report, titled Fiji: Paradise Lost, contends that since the constitution was nullified, Fiji’s military government has limited freedom of expression, movement, assembly, the right to a fair trial and the freedom of arbitrary detention. Also, the government has briefly imprisoned up to 40 people, including lawyers, opposition politicians, high-ranking members of the Methodist church and 20 journalists. The report tallies alleged arrests and other violations through July.

The head of Fiji’s military, Frank Bainimarama, came to power in a December 2006 coup, dissolving parliament and the government of Laisenia Qarase. On April 9, 2009 three judges ruled in a case brought by Qarase that the takeover was illegal. The judges demanded Bainimarama step down, and asked Fiji’s president to appoint a caretaker government to move the country to elections. On April 10, the country’s president claimed he had no power to appoint a new government; instead, he nullified Fiji’s 1997 constitution, fired the entire judiciary and appointed Bainimarama to a five-year term, scheduling elections in 2014.

One of Bainimarama’s first tasks was to promulgate a series of 30-day renewable Public Emergency Regulations, called PER, for “maintaining public safety,” granting the government the authority to, among other things, impose curfews, restrict movement and the ability to detain people for up to seven days without charges. In July, the government said it would extend the PER through December 2009. Amnesty International calls on the government to immediately repeal these rules.

From the report:

The ongoing harassement and arbitrary detention of journalists, lawyers, clergy and government critics by the authorities under the guise of the PER is a tactic used to suppress freedom of expression, including any form of dissent.

The report saves special criticism for the restriction of the country’s press. The rights group points out that extra-constitutional PERs allow the government to revoke the license of any media organ printing negative stories; the government also granted itself power to place censors in newsrooms around the country.

The report also claims the government holds undue influence over the country’s judiciary.

Fiji’s government says the report provides very little proof of alleged human rights abuses perpetrated by the country’s military.

In a comment at the Soli Vakasama blog, Tui argues it is good that someone has begun chronicling the alleged abuses by the Bainiarama regime.

THe entry of Amnesty Interrnational into the foray of Fiji Politics must be very disheartnening to the Illegal Regime.Now they will have to answer to somebody for their total disregard of human and civil rights in Fiji.They have to explain why they are only allowing one side of the story to be told.With the entry of Amnesty International into the mix the illegal regime must explain the abuse of women, the torture of civillians and even their murder.
Isn’t it strange that the regimes first line of defence as stated by the uneducated PS for Info is that people must come with evidence of the abuse. I wonder which planet Leweni is talking from because we know that PER is still in force in Fiji and that is proof enough of abuse of anykind.I am so glad that this is happening in Fiji because soon some heads will begin to roll and it will not be the peoples but that of the illegal regime and its mastermind Bainimarama.

No Right Turn, a blog from New Zealand, calls the report – which also exposes alleged abuses from the December 2006 coup – “unpleasant reading.”

While the Fijian regime are clearly amateurs at oppression, they have successfully created a climate of fear, with people intimidated by “Gestapo tactics”, including threats, arrests, arbitrary detentions, travel bans, and even attacks on homes. According to Amnesty, over a thousand people have been dragged off by the military to their barracks, where they have been beaten, forced to perform military drills, stripped, and sexually abused. At least one person has died as a result of this mistreatment, but despite being tried and convicted, his killers have been released on orders from the regime. The media is subject to censorship and can report only “good news” about the regime and international events. The judiciary has been corrupted and turned into a tool of the regime, and the rule of law no longer exists. Instead, everything is down to the arbitrary whim of those in power.

This isn't happening in some far-off place like China or Zimbabwe - its happening right on our doorstep, in one of the largest countries in the Pacific. And there seems to be very little we can do to stop it.

Bainiarama justified his actions in December 2006 claiming the former government was corrupt and former Prime Minister Qarase ruled solely for the benefit of the indigenous Fijian population at the expense of Indo-Fijians, descendants of indentured servants brought to the islands about a century ago by British colonial rulers. Indigineous Fijians presently make up just below 60 percent of the population while Indo-Fijians represent roughly 37 percent.

Fiji: The Way It Was, Is and Can Be argues this historical context is not found in Amnesty International’s report.

As for the report itself, I can only say I'm deeply disappointed with Amnesty International, an organization that over the years I have admired and financially supported. Its title tells all: Fiji: Paradise Lost: A Tale of Ongoing Human Rights Violations April - July 2009. Its researcher and author is ethnic Fijian Apolosi Bose. Its methodology involved 80 interviews with journalists, lawyers and others, all hostile to the Interim Government, based largely on Bose's visit to Fiji from 4-18 April, and 2008-2009 inputs from “activists in Auckland, Sydney, Melbourne and London. ” The Fiji April visit overlapped the Abrogation of the 1997 Constitution and the introduction of the Public Emergency Regulations. Other than the period immediately following the coup, this was the most troubled period in the past six years…

There have been human rights abuses in Fiji, and not all of them have been properly addressed by the Government. There have also been abuses of office by opponents of the Government. These things happen in post-coup situations. All such happenings need to be place in context, weighed and balanced; compared with earlier (pre-coup) abuses; and considered within a future context: where is Fiji now, and how may we help it to move towards a better future? The Amnesty International investigation does none of these things. It is a report by and about “activists” aimed at an international audience, and it will be used by them to further isolate Fiji to no useful purpose.

Two bloggers from outside Fiji debate the veracity and importance of recent media reports on the purported human rights violations by Fiji’s government.

The QBrand QBlog, from Australia, wonders why people in that country get worked up about problems in Burma, but ignore purported violations in Fiji.

It's getting harder and harder to understand the attitudes of many Australians to our island neighbour Fiji. Despite clear evidence of the repressive nature of the Bainimarama regime, most of the talk I hear about Fiji is about how cheap the airfares are and which resort is the best.

From a branding perspective, what are the forces that perpetuate our view of Fiji as a sleepy, friendly tropical paradise when we get worked up about human rights in Burma and Zimbabwe, or about media censorship in China?

Is it just proximity? Or is it that so many Australians and Australian enterprises with commercial interests in Fiji are willing to be apologists for Bainimarama and his military government?

Café Pacific, from a New Zealand-based journalist and academic, criticizes Pacific media for concentrating on abuses in Fiji while ignoring decades of human rights violations in East Timor.

THE HYPOCRISY reeks. While Australia, NZ and the media went through the usual bleating about Fiji human rights violations, they remained silent about the ongoing struggle to gain justice for those Timorese who have suffered horrendous human rights violations for more than four decades. Alleged human rights violations in Fiji are a soft target - the tough target, the top Indonesian military commanders who have blood on their hands for their colonial adventure in East Timor, remain free with inpunity. Timor-Leste's Truth Commission appeals for an international tribunal and a “commission for disappeared persons” still remain an unlikely dream.

[Note to copy editors, line editors, journalists, NGOs and news organizations: The terms “paradise lost,” “trouble in paradise,” and other related expressions are now forbidden in future reports on Fiji. Utilizing this long-suffering analogy now constitutes a human rights violation.]

While Fiji technically has been suspended from the group of former British colonies since its December 2006 coup, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group made the disbandment full on September 1. This is the second time Fiji has been fully suspended by the group. Only Nigeria, Pakistan and Zimbabwe have previously been removed by the Commonwealth.

While the move was hardly a surprise, it most likely will drive  a deeper wedge between Fiji’s military backed government and the international community. In May, the regional group Pacific Islands Forum suspended Fiji from participation in its body for the failure to hold elections. Shortly afterwards, the European Union cancelled its 24 million Euro sugar subsidy to the country.

To Fiji this most recent suspension means the country will be excluded from Commonwealth sporting events. Also, Fiji’s government will be barred from attending in Commonwealth intergovernmental activities, meetings and, perhaps most importantly, receiving technical assistance.

Frank Bainimarama in December 2006 ousted the government of Laisenia Qarase, whom the military leader claimed ruled for the benefit of indigenous Fijians at the expense of ethnic Indians, the country’s largest minority group, making up nearly 40 percent of the population. It was Fiji's fourth military coup since 1987.

The so-called Indo-Fijians are descendants of indentured workers brought to the Pacific Island nation to work in sugar plantations by British colonial rulers roughly one hundred years ago.

A large proportion of Indo-Fijians have subsequently been kicked off the land their families once farmed. While the community as a whole has excelled in the economic sector, tens of thousands of Indo-Fijians have left Fiji for other countries.

In April Bainimarama and his government was provided with a five-year mandate after the country’s president abrogated the 1997 constitution. He was responding to a court decision claiming Bainimarama’s coup was illegal, forcing the Prime Minister to step down and requiring the president to appoint a caretaker government to bring Fiji to elections. However, the president maintained Fiji’s constitution did not provide him with that power.

Since then, Bainimarama said his government will begin work on a new constitution in 2012 to take the country to elections in 2014. The Prime Minister has said he will write a new electoral law, scraping the country’s method of providing different voter roles for people of different ethnicities. He also maintains he will spend the next three years rebuilding Fiji’s infrastructure and propping up its economy, which has been hit hard by the global economic crisis and the after-effects of political instability.

Let's get to the bloggers. Writing a few days before the suspension, Loyal Fijian argues that life in Fiji will go on outside the umbrella of the Commonwealth.

Fiji is is set to be suspended from the Commonwealth.

While this statement Will surely be used by the Anti-IG forces to depict the IG in a bad light, life will go on as normal.

The Commonwealth is nothing more than a Club of former British colonies with no real purpose or power.

In fact, what is the sense of reminding ourselves of the dark chapter when we were subjugated by a foreign power?

In this day and age, do we need a Commonwealth?

Loyal Fijian does not think so. We are a sovereign nation and have no need for the relics of history.We are a republic!

The Commonwealth can do as it pleases.

Fiji: The Way It Was, Is and Can Be finds little solace in the Commonwealth's decision.

One can, of course, see where the Forum and Commonwealth are coming from. They had to react to what they saw as an illegitimate regime imposed by the military. The pity is they could not also see that the regime that was deposed was far from democratic, even though it had the support of most ethnic Fijians. And that the only way to break the cycle of coups, and establish a just and more genuine democracy, was to remove race as the inflammatory accelerant from Fiji politics once and for all. The party leaders, Qarase and Chaudhry, the Commonwealth insist Bainimarama include in dialogue do not want this. Race-based parties and electorates guarantee their re-election. That's why their recent letter to Bainimarama copied the Commonwealth's insistence on inclusive dialogue with no conditions and no determined outcomes, and why the Government will always resist this sort of dialogue with politicians like this.

The situation is anomalous but the irony is not hard to see. Read it slowly. Two democratic, non-racist institutions oppose a military regime —–and so unwittingly continue to extend support for undemocratic, racist politicians—– and so undermine the wobbly efforts of the military regime (sic!) —- to impose democratic, non-racist political procedures.

However, a comment from Alterego takes the blog's writer, Crosbie Walsh, to task for his alleged support of the Bainimarama regime:

I'm as opposed as you are to undemocratic, racist politicians; problem is they're a product of the population that elects them. As are the good ones: every country has it's fair share of both.

At least pre-Bainimarama the upright citizens of Fiji could publicly voice their opinions, campaign on issues of importance, petition their representatives, vote bad leaders out, and take bad law to court.

So how exactly is the current situation an improvement?

No Right Turn, another blog from New Zealand, wonders why it took the Commonwealth so long to suspend Fiji.

Almost three years after Bainimarama's coup, Fiji has been suspended from the Commonwealth. It took them long enough. The net effect will be that the Fijian regime doesn't get invited to parties any more - including, if they care, the Commonwealth games - but that seems entirely appropriate for an unelected dictatorship.

Given the entrenched anti-democratic attitudes of Fiji's dictator, this is unlikely to change his mind. But it does send a message internationally that coups and dictators are unacceptable to the community of nations, and that democratic countries will not associate themselves with them.

At Raw Fiji News, lartinidaveta says the UN must continue the pressure on the regime and send Fiji’s peacekeepers home.

If the Commonwealth would really want to hit Baini and his supporters where it hurt most then they should veto for the discontinuation of RFMF at all UN Peacekeeping duties. That is Baini lifeblood thats keeping him in power. All Fijian Security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan should be terminated immediately and have them replaced by other Pacific Islanders Peace keepers that had being trained by RAMSI. There should be concerted effort by all global and regional gatekeepers in order to eradicate this type of political problem from the Pacific for good. What ever happen in Fiji can aslo happen in PNG and these are destabilizing factors for regional peace.

Along with news of the suspension, the International Federation of Journalists have called for Australians and others to boycott Fiji. This is in response to the Public Emergency Rules that have been in place since the abrogation of the constitution that give the government the power to place censors in news bureaus throughout Fiji.

At the Soli Vakasama blog, Fiji ex tourist wonders how regular people will accept the suspension.

It will be interesting tonight to see its reaction to the suspension from the Commonwealth. Surely the athletes and rugby players who will miss out on the Commonwealth games next year must be spewing.

Let’s hope they air their disquiet.

The UN must now suspend Fijian soldiers from all peacekeeping; it is immoral not to do so.

It was a great call by the journalists to ask tourists to not visit Fiji. It is not the workers who would lose money but the junta through taxes.