Moala's battle for the right to speak out
Title -- 4022 TONGA: Moala's battle for the right to speak out
Date -- 12 April 2003
Byline -- None
Origin -- Pacific Media Watch
Source -- New Zealand Herald, 12/4/03
Copyright -- NZH
Status -- Unabridged
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MOALA'S BATTLE FOR THE RIGHT TO SPEAK OUT
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?thesection=news&thesubsection=&storyID=3400648
AUCKLAND (NZH/Pacific Media Watch): Exiled Tongan newspaper publisher Kalafi Moala believes New Zealand is the best place for Pacific media to pursue freedom of expression and predicts major changes for the region's media.
"We feel strongly that Auckland, the largest Polynesian city in the world, will become a centre for social change," he told the New Zealand Herald's Theresa Garner.
"Things that are going to impact on the Pacific are going to come out of this place."
Moala, 54, has been struggling for for almost two months for the right of his banned Auckland-based newspaper, Taimi 'o Tonga, to be distributed again in Tonga.
Earlier this month he won a Supreme Court ruling declaring the ban illegal but the kingdom's Privy Council immediately banned the paper with an ordinance. This latest legal ploy is also under challenge in the courts.
The latest International Press Institute World Press Freedom report on the region is entitled "Pacific Grim".
It mentions corruption and repressive legislation in Tonga, but is concerned about the region as a whole, saying that while Western governments may be used to it, Pacific governments have little or no tolerance for journalists showing them up.
"Governments on smaller islands have done their best to dissuade local journalists from writing on corruption, and where this has been unsuccessful they have been prepared to use the full weight of the police and the courts to silence the media," the report said.
While for many Pacific leaders, the media "are the enemy", New Zealand figures at the other end of the IPI press freedom scale.
New Zealand is among the top five countries in the world for press freedom, according to the IPI report.
For Moala, the fact that Taimi 'o Tonga is considered by the Tongan establishment to be a "hazardous substance requiring immediate disposal" draws a chuckle.
He has spent the past 14 years crusading for democracy and highlighting abuses of power through the pages of the bi-weekly, Tongan language publication.
Smuggling operations have been underway in Auckland since the paper was banned. Hidden in suitcases or mailed in letters, copies are making their way past the dumping bins and into Tonga.
For Moala, the proof came when he was in Tonga for the court case. Investigating a commotion in the marketplace, he found "10 people looking over one copy of Taimi 'o Tonga that someone had smuggled in from New Zealand".
Cost and convenience are the main reasons for printing the paper in New Zealand. Setting up a modern printing press in Tonga and paying duty on getting newsprint to Tonga would have crushed the paper, which has been printed out of Auckland since 1995.
David Robie, a senior lecturer in journalism at the Auckland University of Technology, says the Auckland-based Pacific press is a vibrant and rapidly growing section of the region's news industry and is having an important influence on politics and the media.
In his book Island Kingdom Strikes Back, Moala predicts an uprising if Tonga does not change its system of government. He says generations of Tongans have grown up believing it was all right to be oppressed.
PACIFIC MEDIA WATCH is an independent, non-profit, non-government organisation comprising journalists, lawyers, editors and other media workers, dedicated to examining issues of ethics, accountability, censorship, media freedom and media ownership in the Pacific region. Launched in October 1996, it has links with the Journalism Program at the University of the South Pacific, Bushfire Media based in Sydney, Journalism Studies at the University of PNG (UPNG), the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ), Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, and Community Communications Online (c2o).
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