2) Media under strain in Melanesia during challenging era
3) New Guinea has most diverse plant life on earth
4) Papua’s Kurik health center closed after resident contracted COVID-19
5) Thin line between compliance and press freedom in West Papua
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1) VWPAUC to focus on alleged human right abuse
By Len Garae 23 hrs ago
VWPAUC Chairman welcomes Prime Minister’s stand on West Papua
Chairman of Vanuatu West Papua Association and Unification Committee (VWPAUC), Pastor Alan Nafuki, has welcomed Prime Minister Bob Loughman’s confirmation that his Government supports 100% his Committee’s stand against alleged Human Rights abuse by the military of Indonesia against the people of West Papua, and the importance to recognise the future of the Melanesians.
In his keynote address on the country’s 40th, the Prime Minister assured the country and the world of his Government’s commitment against the suffering of the people of West Papua.
The Chairman says he is confident that his Committee is going to make progress in leaps and bounds under the current Government because it is exactly forty years since Vanuatu first pledged its support for the people of West Papua.
“The Prime Minister and I go to the same church every Sunday and I am confident that a praying Head of Government at this time is essential, and coincides with our biblical doctrine that we have arrived at the door after forty years in the wilderness for greater achievements for Vanuatu, VWPAUC, and West Papua as a Melanesian country”, he says.
While he confirms the Prime Minister’s denial that Jakarta has invited Vanuatu nor his Committee to visit Jayapura for talks, the Chairman has not ruled out any such possibility for such dialogue.
“If someone is regarded as an enemy, a way has to be found for the two to talk to each other to find a way out. In the same way, we have to be ready to dialogue with Jakarta”, he says.
“The Prime Minister assured my Committee that he has not received any invitation from Jakarta but that his Government received a communication from a Jakarta Office in New Zealand in which West Papua was mentioned but that there was no invitation directly from Jakarta”.
The Chairman was approached by an individual who claimed that the Chairman’s name was also on the list of persons allegedly invited by Jakarta to visit Indonesia.
“Following the allegation, I wish to reiterate that my committee can only work with the Government but not with any innuendo(s) regarding our work on West Papua”, he stresses.
He says so much has been delayed due to COVID-19 but that as soon as the current travel restrictions are lifted, he wishes to assure the people of Vanuatu and the Pacific and the world that his Committee will definitely be “moving with the current wherever it is heading”.
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2) Media under strain in Melanesia during challenging era
9:01 am today
Hostile media environments pose growing challenges to Melanesia's democracies, according to a new edition of the Pacific Journalism Review.
With its first special edition focussed on Melanesia, the New Zealand-based research journal warned that laws and cultural restrictions were providing barriers to open information, as well as silencing journalists.
The region's pressing media problems are explored in depth in what the journal's editor, David Robie, describes as the most significant volume of Pacific journalism research ever produced.
He said with the region now in a challenging period, when countries confront the pandemic, it was worrying that the climate change crisis was sidelined.
"Because really climate change is the overwhelming issue for their future. And if we're dealing with media that is being sort of screwed down by governments and prevented from freely reporting information that the public need for democracy, it's a very disturbing future."
Professor Robie said this edition of the PJR stemmed from a partnership with the Melanesia Media Freedom Forum which was founded last year at a Brisbane conference in November in conjunction with Griffith University.
In a sign of the pressures on journalists and media practitioners in Melanesia, Vanuatu's government attempted to deny one of the delegates at the conference, the former Vanuatu Daily Post media director Dan McGarry, permission to re-enter the country.
This is one of a number of recent examples of threats facing journalism in Melanesia which are fleshed out in this edition of the Pacific Journalism Review.
Among the articles and editorials by regional journalists and researchers are examinations of state repression of media freedom in Fiji, Indonesia's Papua region and Papua New Guinea.
The PJR highlighted how both of PNG's main daily newspapers were owned by overseas multinationals - the Post-Courier by Australian-US media tycoon Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, and The National by the Malaysian logging company Rimbunan Hijau.
It also looked at how PNG's burgeoning telecommunications sector was changing the way people accessed media and information in the Pacific's biggest country.
Professor Robie said the internet was vitally important to media in this region, as public trust was low in mainstream media in countries like PNG, but warned there was also a critical need for balance and verification.
"With such reliance on social media, it's pretty rampant.. all sorts of scare stories and things that aren't checked out, and so on," he said.
"So it's pretty hard to get a situation with the media where there's reliable information."
The PJR’s latest edition 'Media Freedom in Melanesia' can be accessed here.
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3) New Guinea has most diverse plant life on earth
4:26 pm on 6 August 2020
New Guinea has the most diverse plant life of any island on earth, according to new research.
An team of international researchers has produced the first verified checklist of the vascular plants on mainlNZ airport readies for Cooks bubble as islands fear youth flightand New Guinea and surrounding islands, and published their findings in the journal Nature.
Over 13,600 species were documented on New Guinea, the world's largest tropical island which is politically split in half - Papua New Guinea in the east, and Indonesian-ruled territory in the west.
That gives New Guinea the highest plant diversity of any island on earth, surpassing Madagascar, (11,832 species), Borneo (11,165 species), and Sumatra (8,391 species).
New Guinea's flora was also highly unique, with the new study finding more than two-thirds of its plants were endemic, meaning they were only found on the island.
Researchers involved in the study argued that expert knowledge was essential for building checklists in the digital era, as online databases overestimated the species counts by 22 per cent.
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4) Papua’s Kurik health center closed after resident contracted COVID-19
14 hours ago
Jayapura, Papua (ANTARA) - Kurik Health Center in Kurik Sub-district, Merauke, Papua, terminated services for intensive care unit and inpatient rooms from Aug 6 to Aug 21 after a resident treated there tested positive for novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
Nine of the health center's 50 medical workers were also isolated, while the infected resident was sent to a local hospital for medical treatment, spokesman of Merauke District's COVID-19 Task Force Neville Maskita revealed here on Thursday.
"The Kurik Health Center has just stopped its services for the ICU and rooms for inpatients, but it still serves those in need of other medical services," Maskita noted, adding that the nine medical workers had tested negative for COVID-19.
Despite their negative swab test results confirming that they had not contracted the virus, the nine medical workers, who came in direct contact with the infected resident, were isolated, and the health center's facilities were disinfected, Maskita remarked.
"The Kurik Health Center will resume its normal medical services on Aug 22," Maskita stated, adding that the health center has 50 paramedics, including two general practitioners and a dentist, and 10 hospital beds.
Related news: COVID-19 pandemic remains persistent, glaring challenge for Papua
Related news: Jayapura's COVID-19 recoveries increased to 181: task force
Coronavirus infections initially surfaced in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of 2019.
COVID-19 has thereafter spread to over 215 countries and territories, including 34 provinces of Indonesia, with a huge rise in death toll.
Papua has been making persistent, all-out efforts to flatten the coronavirus curve, but the COVID-19 pandemic remains a grave challenge for the province, as 33 locals succumbed to the deadly virus, while 3,087 others are hospitalized at several hospitals.
With 1,864 confirmed cases, Jayapura, the capital of Papua Province, was viewed as the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, spokesman of the Papua Provincial Government's COVID-19 Task Force Silwaus Sumule stated in Jayapura on Tuesday evening.
Jayapura, Mimika, Keerom, and Biak Numfor are the four other districts, with a high count of COVID-19 cases, he noted, adding that 1,495 symptomatic residents had made a complete recovery and were discharged from hospitals.
In the wake of the high rate of infection, local authorities have yet to enforce a transitional period for adapting to the new normal scenario in Jayapura City, but if the COVID-19 curve can be flattened, it can be imposed in September, he remarked.
Related news: Jayapura hospital closed after 54 health workers contract COVID-19
Related news: West Papua has successfully controlled COVID-19: Task Force
Nine of the health center's 50 medical workers were also isolated, while the infected resident was sent to a local hospital for medical treatment, spokesman of Merauke District's COVID-19 Task Force Neville Maskita revealed here on Thursday.
"The Kurik Health Center has just stopped its services for the ICU and rooms for inpatients, but it still serves those in need of other medical services," Maskita noted, adding that the nine medical workers had tested negative for COVID-19.
Despite their negative swab test results confirming that they had not contracted the virus, the nine medical workers, who came in direct contact with the infected resident, were isolated, and the health center's facilities were disinfected, Maskita remarked.
"The Kurik Health Center will resume its normal medical services on Aug 22," Maskita stated, adding that the health center has 50 paramedics, including two general practitioners and a dentist, and 10 hospital beds.
Related news: COVID-19 pandemic remains persistent, glaring challenge for Papua
Related news: Jayapura's COVID-19 recoveries increased to 181: task force
Coronavirus infections initially surfaced in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of 2019.
COVID-19 has thereafter spread to over 215 countries and territories, including 34 provinces of Indonesia, with a huge rise in death toll.
Papua has been making persistent, all-out efforts to flatten the coronavirus curve, but the COVID-19 pandemic remains a grave challenge for the province, as 33 locals succumbed to the deadly virus, while 3,087 others are hospitalized at several hospitals.
With 1,864 confirmed cases, Jayapura, the capital of Papua Province, was viewed as the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, spokesman of the Papua Provincial Government's COVID-19 Task Force Silwaus Sumule stated in Jayapura on Tuesday evening.
Jayapura, Mimika, Keerom, and Biak Numfor are the four other districts, with a high count of COVID-19 cases, he noted, adding that 1,495 symptomatic residents had made a complete recovery and were discharged from hospitals.
In the wake of the high rate of infection, local authorities have yet to enforce a transitional period for adapting to the new normal scenario in Jayapura City, but if the COVID-19 curve can be flattened, it can be imposed in September, he remarked.
Related news: Jayapura hospital closed after 54 health workers contract COVID-19
Related news: West Papua has successfully controlled COVID-19: Task Force
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