Alistar Kata
AUCKLAND (Pacific Media Watch): Young New Zealanders are becoming more engaged with issues in the Pacific region by getting involved on social media sites.
Human rights issues in countries or territories like West Papua have a strong public presence on Facebook, Twitter and other alternative media sites.
Secretary of the Asia-Pacific Human Rights’ Coalition (APHRC) Del Abcede says social media should be used more often.
“I'm very pleased that it is happening because West Papua is now a big issue all over the world,” she said.
“Everyday when I check my Facebook, I see postings from Mexico, from Spain, from Portugal or from here in NZ, all over the world, and that’s what we should be using the social media for.”
A seminar on Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific (NFIP) issues held by the coalition and hosted by AUT University's Pacific Media Centre last night raised concerns about getting young people involved with more Pacific matters.
“There’s a lot more work to be done and I feel that the young generation has the responsibility as well to educate themselves and spread the message,” said Abcede.
Strongly connected
Executive director of Greenpeace New Zealand Bunny McDiarmid said New Zealand and the Pacific were strongly connected and the New Zealand government could do more.
“There’s a strong connection between New Zealand and the Pacific because there’s a lot of people from the Pacific who live here and a lot of people who have family in the Pacific as well,” she said.
“We’re culturally and emotionally and financially very connected to the Pacific”.
Part of the problem of awareness is the New Zealand news media, according to activists at the seminar.
Abcede said she felt “disgusted” about what the New Zealand media were not doing.
“The mainstream media is not doing their job well.
“They only talk about some issues - when there is a conflict, or when there is a disaster like in Vanuatu."
But Abcede said young people were becoming more proactive about the Pacific region, motivating people to “own” the issues and act on them.
An excerpt from the Hawai'ian human rights film Noho Kewa about the militarisation of the Pacific state and a talk by Fijian researcher Ema Tagicakibau of the Pacific Small Arms Action Group about the military victims of the British post-war nuclear tests in Kiribati and the legal battles for compensation were also featured during the seminar.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
Alistar Kata
