Editor vows to fight ban

By THERESA GARNER pacific reporter

At New Zealand airports, fruit is considered a dangerous item fit only for the customs bin. But a short flight away in Tonga, the concourse loudspeakers demand passengers leave behind their newspapers.

That his paper Taimi 'o Tonga (Times of Tonga) is considered by the Tongan establishment to be a hazardous substance requiring immediate disposal, draws a chuckle from publisher Kalafi Moala.

He has spent the past 14 years crusading for democracy and highlighting abuses of power in the small island kingdom through the pages of the bi-weekly publication.

It has been six weeks since the paper was banned by the Tongan monarchy's privy council, which is why smuggling operations are underway in Auckland, where the paper is printed. 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".

Moala was born in Tonga, but Auckland is the 54-year-old's Pacific "paradise". It is from here, in a garage at the back of his Penrose home, that he directs operations of the paper, widely regarded as the best and most independent source of Tongan news.

"We feel strongly that Auckland, the largest Polynesian city in the world, will become a centre for social change. Things that are going to impact on the Pacific are going to come out of this place."

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.

For Moala, 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.

"You just couldn't find a better place for our kind of business, where you get the paper printed, delivered to the airport, and off to all these different places, the United States, Australia and Tonga," Moala says.

While deliveries to Tonga are on hold, and the print run has been cut from just under 20,000 a week to 8000, the expatriate Tongan readership is keeping the paper afloat.

"We have strong support from our community. There are about about 40,700 Tongans in New Zealand based on the last census, and most of them are in Auckland," Moala says happily.

He can tap into New Zealand's educated Pacific population, with its knowledge about conditions in Tonga and life in a democracy, too. And they are "vying for reform".

But there is another reason Moala works from Auckland. Moala was never quite sure if the police would knock on his door and haul him away about something he had published. "Because of the hostility that came to us from the Minister of Police, for me personally it was really nice to be away and operating outside the restrictive environment."

During the paper's 14-year history, it has been raided 12 times by police, staff have received threatening calls and the paper has been sued by Government officials.

Moala, a colleague, and a pro-democracy politician spent 26 days in prison in 1996 before being freed by the Supreme Court, which ruled their imprisonment was unconstitutional.

Clive Edwards, the Tongan Police Minister, was involved then and is a key figure in the latest attempt to stifle Moala. He said in court that the ban was over the paper's supposed "claims" that the kingdom's leadership is engaged in homosexual activities. He appeared to be referring to a satire and a cartoon.

The role of Edwards, a former Auckland lawyer, in the saga brings to mind Javert the police inspector in Les Miserables, who hounds the hero relentlessly over years and miles.

In one letter to Edwards in the 1990s, after Edwards banned him from Tonga, Moala mentions the "personal hatred" he has been up against.

"Your action demonstrates again that Tonga is run by people like yourself who use their power wrongly to downtrodden [sic] those whom they dislike or who hold different views from them."

While this case is about Tonga, the issues faced by this editor are paralleled in other Pacific nations.

In Papua New Guinea, for instance, legislation is being threatened that will allow media critics to be punished.

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," David Dadge writes.

For many Pacific leaders, the media are the enemy. One Fijian senator, Mitieli Bulanauca, described the media as "Satan's agents". The AFP reporter Michael Field has been banned from more countries than any other journalist in the Pacific and has expressed fears for journalism after noting the region is cracking down on reporters.

At the other end of the scale, New Zealand is among the top five countries in the world for press freedom.

Since Moala's return to Tonga after 25 years abroad studying and working as a missionary, he has trodden on toes.

Just months into his arrival, he shot a pig that was tearing up his backyard. Before he could even get another shot in, his mother phoned, after being called by a neighbour. "You can't just go shooting people's pigs. Please don't bring shame to our family," she asked.

Moala chalked it up to cultural conflict, something he has been embroiled in since he started the paper. He has lost friends over his stories and his political differences with his loved late father strained their relationship.

"The temptation was always there to succumb to the familial, tribal, territorial and other social ties," he writes in his book Island Kingdom Strikes Back. "I have stuck by one motto: just print the truth." Despite their differences, his father had told him often that "it is the truth that sets people free".

He says it is possible the book, an unprecedented critique of Tonga's king and his Government, prompted the latest attack on the newspaper.

In the foreword to the book Professor Futa Helu of 'Atenisi University says it is the story of a newspaper's struggle "against a despotic and undemocratic state within a morally undeveloped culture".

It is this regime which passed a new law banning the paper last week, after losing a case in the Supreme Court over an earlier ban. The Privy Council is made up of Cabinet ministers and King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV .

Moala says the latest action is the harshest yet. The paper has been banned as a "prohibited import" because it is a "foreign paper", because it is "seditious", and has apparently "ruthlessly campaigned" for the overthrow of the Government.

In his book 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.

"What we're seeing in Tonga is a leadership crisis," Moala says. "The leaders are absolutely threatened by reform. They are afraid that the people are going to rise up against them and therefore they are sensitive to any kind of criticism."

Moala, the winner of the first Pacific Media Freedom Award, says he wants to be remembered as "a man who loved justice, kindness and godly humility".

Recruiting high-school graduates with "open fresh minds", Moala would quote Ben Bradlee of the Washington Post to them: "News is the first draft of history". "I wanted Taimi 'o Tonga to 'write history' in Tonga."

The paper has done that and it has also become the news. But Moala says wider issues are at stake than the fate of his paper, which has laid off half its staff and is about to close its office in Tonga. He is asking Pacific people to join a wider struggle for free speech.

"In the Pacific, criticism of authority and leadership is a big thing, and in many ways we have been the pioneers of trying to break through this.

"We have been accused of being insensitive to the Tongan culture. What they are saying is whenever we scrutinise somebody in authority, whenever we point out the corrupt practices, that we are being insensitive to Tongan culture. If corruption is part of your culture, if cheating is a part of it, then obviously we are insensitive to that."

His love of Tonga is implicit, but his forecast for the country is grim, unless it rids itself of a system of government that puts all the power in the hands of the king.

"I think it is definitely going to get worse before it gets better."

In a country where few people have access to the internet, the Government has forbidden people from downloading electronic copies of the paper. The fine is $1000 or two years in jail.

Despite this, copies will no doubt continue to be smuggled in and pored over in the marketplace.

As someone who spent 10 years teaching journalism in Papua New Guinea and in Fiji, David Robie says the staff of Taimi 'o Tonga are seen widely by other Pacific journalists as a model for their commitment to professionalism and training.

Robie says pressure on media freedom is cyclical in the South Pacific. "It is always lurking in the background, then it erupts for a while, and it often takes courage to be a journalist in the region."

The Government of Tonga's official website has not yet been updated. It lists its prohibited imports as firearms, ammunition, drugs and pornography.