Temokalati (Democracy)

Rioters and looters wander the streets of Nuku’alofa in 2006. Photo: John Ewen / CC-BY-SA-2.5

It’s no mystery that working people across the world are having a tough time. We are having to deal with stagnating wages, a housing crisis, increasing cost of living, political instability, and a general feeling of unease. For Pasifika workers, there are even more problems to deal with: sending money back home, visa troubles, racism in and out of the workplace, and conservative communities dominated by church leaders. It could seem like everything is ‘fucked up beyond all recognition’. But it doesn’t have to be this way: a better way is possible.

The movements for democracy in the Pacific have had ebbs and flows. It has had to compete against European and American colonialism, as well as domestic infighting between democratic and anti-democratic forces. Across the Pacific, workers and toilers lack parties of their own, and are forced to align with whichever ruling class party abuses them the least. They have had their democratic aspirations squandered by corrupt or weak liberal governments, and in the worst cases (such as Fiji), have had them smashed and stolen from them by military gangs.

In Tonga, the democratic movement struggles to make substantial progress. This is in spite of democratic reforms which were undertaken since 2010, and despite the democratic movement being elected to power through the 2010s. Why is it that even though ‘pro-democracy’ parties are elected to power in the Pacific, little progress is made in terms of democratic reform? It is because these parties are not parties of and for workers and toilers. They are instead parties of the ruling class: the government bureaucrats, the chiefs, the nobles, the generals, the admirals, and the police.

Together, these forces act to restrain the aspirations of workers and toilers for democratic reform. They act against movements fighting for transparency in government, national ownership of utilities and industry, increased wages for workers, an end to foreign military presence, women’s freedom, and more. Because workers and toilers lack a party of their own, they are unable to fight back against these forces.

But the people are not stupid, they can tell they’re being played for fools. This is why many in Tonga question the leadership of the so-called Democratic Party. But without a viable alternative, they instead vote for independents, or splinter parties run by corrupt politicians. The corrupt and inept leadership of the democratic movements of the Pacific need to be overturned, and replaced by revolutionary socialist leadership.

Revolutionary socialism is the complete transformation of society, politics, and the economy. It overturns the system of private property and market economics that dominates the globe, and puts in its place a social, co-operative economy, governed democratically by working people. It replaces a government run by church ministers, nobles, chiefs, and politicians, with a government run by working people themselves. Socialists are democrats because we aim to establish a radically democratic system, called Socialism/Communism. This is a system built on popular sovereignty, the rule of the working class.

The struggle for revolutionary socialist leadership in the Pacific is going to be a long struggle. The Pacific does not have a long tradition of socialist politics to draw from, it must instead draw from the political traditions of the rest of the world – not as a model to follow directly, but as an example of how the working class can struggle for power. This is why we’re launching Temokalati (Democracy): to act as a platform of revolutionary socialists in and around the Pacific.

Temokalati has two main purposes: to promote revolutionary socialist politics in the Pacific, and to inform the rest of the world of what Pasifika democrats are struggling for. But while we support, promote and highlight struggles in the Pacific, we aim to ‘connect the dots’ and help people understand that the struggle for democracy in the Pacific is not a lone struggle. It is instead part of a global struggle for revolutionary change and transformation.

The Pacific democrats of the past have promised democratic reform, but have only been able to provide peanuts. They are not capable of providing real democratic change for workers in the Pacific, because they aim to take control of the capitalist machinery on behalf of foreign imperialists, whether they reside in Canberra, Washington D.C, or Beijing. These imperialists, who reside in the ‘Pacific rim’ (the regions surrounding the Pacific, such as Australia, China, S.E. Asia, and the U.S.), want to keep Pasifika workers oppressed and exploited.

Cover image: Papua New Guinea Defence Force

Australia seeks to expand its influence over the Pacific by incorporating Pacific peoples into its colonial project. Brunhilda writes on the ‘Pukpuk treaty’ between Australia and Papua New Guinea, and its implications for Papuans that will inevitably wind up in the Australian Defence Force.

Australia’s foreign policy in the Pacific has taken a worrying trend, with the recent signing of the PNG-Australia Mutual Defence Treaty (the so-called “Pukpuk treaty”) in late 2025. The treaty grants Australian Defence Force (ADF) members extraterritorial legal rights while in PNG (Article 8, Clause 3), and passes the buck on building ADF bases onto the Port Moresby government (Annex C. Article 1, Clause 2). The more noteworthy section of the treaty establishes ADF enlistment for PNG citizens as a pathway to Australian citizenship (Article 5, clause 2, subsection J).

This treaty between Australia and PNG is the first of most likely many such treaties to be signed between imperialist powers and peripheral nations, which does little more than tie these post-colonial countries to their former colonial overlords. As of writing, Australia is negotiating similar treaties with the governments of Fiji (led by coup-master Sitiveni Rabuka) and Napat’s government in Vanuatu. This is part of Australia’s endeavours to “step up their [Australia’s] engagement with their pacific family”, ongoing since 2019.

The Logic of ANZAC Imperialism

This move is far from new. It comes from the fundamental logic of the Australian state, viewing itself as a sub-imperial force in the South Pacific. Australia has never been an independent imperialist power in its own right, only serving as a sub-imperial gendarme of first British, and not American, imperialism in the region. This has allowed the Australian state to build its own little imperialist machine in alliance with that of a greater power. Australia’s sub-imperial nature can be seen in its interactions with South Pacific nations, and more closely, with neighbouring Papua New Guinea. Australia exerted an almost total economic domination over the region, alongside its junior partner New Zealand.

Rather than outright economic gain, these imperialist moves were justified through appeals to national defence and strategic depth. That is to say, Australia aims to use Pacific countries as a kind of human shield against rival powers such as China. Consider the lopsided nature of Australia’s economic relationship with the Pacific region. 24% of PNG’s trade as of 2024 was with Australia; at around $2.19 Billion USD worth of exports, of which in 2024, 92.6% was gold. In contrast, PNG makes up 1.4% of Australian imports, and 0.62% of Australian exports. The Pacific’s main export to Australia is labour, and providing an expansion for military defence via hosting the ADF.

Papua New Guinea is the platonic ideal of Australian imperialism in the Pacific. The initial push by Queensland to illegally (by British standards!) colonise the southern half of the country rationalised itself on the basis that “...the prospect of a major foreign power moving into a region so close to Australia, and consequently threatening the security of the continent and its trade route through Torres Strait to East Asia, was as important as the alleged economic potential” (Roger C. Thompson. Australian Imperialism in the Pacific: The expansionist era 1820-1920 (Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1980), 39.). This economic potential, of course, involved the practice of “blackbirding”. In other terms, legally distinct slavery. Thousands of Papuans would be dragged from their villages and spirited away to sugar plantations in North Queensland. The decisive political factor, much as it was in the British colonisation of Fiji in the late 19th century, was the fear of rival colonial powers securing military access to the region, which would put them in a good position to potentially attack Australia. Such powers included France and Germany. Rumours of German colonisation in Papua helped justify efforts by Queensland to launch their own colonisation project.

German colonists raise the German flag in what would soon be called German New Guinea. Caption reads: Hoisting of the German Imperial War Flag on November 4th 1884 on Mioko Island, Neulauenburg, Bismarck Archipelago (now Duke of York Islands, Papua New Guinea).

The lesson of both world wars, the second of which Australia was threatened directly by a rival power (Japan), only reinforced the necessity of maintaining a military alliance with the dominant imperial power in the minds of Australian military planners. This required a continued military hegemony over the Pacific. Tensions between China and the US have given credence to this military vision, and the consensus within Australia’s defence circles is that a war with China is both necessary and inevitable.

Michael Wesley, writing in the occasionally insightful, if fundamentally liberal, Australian Foreign Affairs journal described this tendency as “our pervasive anxiety about the dynamism, difference and poverty of our Asian neighbours”. Australia’s military logic is simple: Australia is simply too big, and has too few people in it. Events such as the infamous Brisbane Lane scandal show that for Australia’s politicians and military planners, the task of defending this giant continent from a potential amphibious invasion is nigh impossible with sacrificing a vast amount of territory to any hypothetical invader. Everywhere outside of the urbanised south-east coast was considered more or less expendable.

The perspective overall is “defence via distance”. This is a strategy that relies on maintaining Australia’s strategic depth through ensuring that no rival power is able to secure a military control over the Pacific. This has been based on the historical division in the Pacific based on Australia and New Zealand’s territorial influence. This division traditionally was between “New Zealand [..] Polynesia, especially Samoa and the Cook Islands, and Australia in Melanesia” (Thompson, R. C., 1980).

Military Blackbirding?

The 2026 Australian National Defence Strategy was met with little to no comment by the socialist left in this country. All anti-imperialists, revolutionists, and socialists in Australia should be concerned with this document, as it heads Australia’s war drive in the Pacific. The document outlines that “the Government remains committed to a permanent ADF of 69,000 by the early 2030s, with continual growth to achieve a permanent ADF and Australian Public Service (APS) combined workforce of around 100,000 by 2040.”

The ADF has had notorious issues with recruitment, and the Australian state aims to fill enlistment gaps with Pacific auxiliary enlistees, predominantly from PNG. What we are seeing in the Pacific is a soft return of “blackbirding”, but this time for the ADF. First, there was the signing of the “Pukpuk treaty”. The treaty allows for up to 10,000 Papuans to be recruited to the ADF, which PM James Marape is more than eager to provide. By providing a pathway to Australian citizenship, and thus an on-paper escape from the poverty and destitution of life in PNG, the ADF becomes an attractive option for Papuans, especially youth.

Serena Sasingan for the Lowy Institute writes that “this defence cooperation presents an opportunity to build shared capability while creating thousands of structured opportunities for PNG’s youth – training, income, and discipline that translate into employability and upward social mobility.” What this fails to discuss however is what this ‘opportunity’ will seriously represent.

As the recruits will only receive Australian citizenship at the end of their service, it is unclear if they will fall under the current ADF industrial award/pay system. Considering the history of the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) Scheme, a healthy sense of cynicism should be warranted when looking at the potential for pay equality between PNG recruits, and Australian born members. Neither has there been any news on the potential for these recruits to be trained as officers. Whilst it’s likely that a layer of these recruits will be trained as officers, it is likely to be a particularly narrow one. Those that are integrated into command ranks will be trained with the strategic view of providing a core of politically reliable military officers able to serve in both the ADG and PNGDF (Papua New Guinean Defence Force).

The majority of the recruits most likely will serve as grunts within the broader ADF. It is unlikely that they will serve in a separate regiment; moreso, these recruits will train under white Australian officers, serve under white Australian officers, and be expected to die under the command of white Australian officers.

The strategic hopes of the ADF are clearly that the enlistment of up to ten thousand Papuans will fill gaps in ADF recruiting. Less overtly, the hope is that by dangling yams on a stick, the ADF can ‘dupe’ the destitute peoples of the Pacific into signing their lives away to fight for Australia’s imperial control over the region. This treaty most likely will grant the ADF the strategic bolstering that it hopes for. For the youth of PNG, however, it offers a much grimmer likelihood.

Those accepted into the ADF will be disconnected from their home, taken to another country, and forced to learn a new language; trained to fight and die under the orders of an uncaring officer class that is totally disconnected from them. If a serious war doesn’t come, large amounts of their pay will return home in remittances for their family. Those who choose to return home will face a country defined by severe poverty, a deeply incoherent state apparatus, and only deeper under the grip of imperialism.

If a war does come, they almost certainly will form part of the first wave of Australian forces deployed. The promises of opportunity offered to them will reveal themselves to be the opportunity to be the first shredded apart by a drone, or the first to die choking on their own blood attempting to force a landing. This is to say, black people will once again form an expendable line of human shields.

Indentured labourers from the Pacific (called “Kanakas”) toil on a sugar plantation in North Queensland, late 19th century. This practice, of misleading Polynesians into indentured servitude, was known as “blackbirding”.

Beyond Papua

The treaty is likely to be only the first of its kind, as the growing Chinese investment in the South Pacific rallies Australian imperialism, and military expansion. At the time of writing, the new Solomon Islands PM Matthew Wale has announced his intention to sign a new treaty with the Australian government. Little is confirmed, but Wale seemingly hopes to strike a faustian bargain with Canberra for developmental aid. Australia will doubtlessly use their treaty with PNG as the model for securing military control over Pacific nations.

The ongoing war between the US, Israel and Iran has sent ripples across the world economy. The Pacific will see a further implementation of austerity regimes, as Pacific countries with developing economies continue to struggle. It was only twenty years ago when the workers of Tonga took to the streets of the capital in an escalation for the battle for democracy. Of course, as the workers and toilers fought for democracy, it was the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (1 RAR) that flew over to crack Tongan skulls.

It is a question of where and when, not if, the revolution will emerge again in the Pacific. When it does, it will undoubtedly be Australian and New Zealander jackboots deployed to smash the workers and toilers. The epoch of peaceful liberalism is over. Albanese can prattle all he wants about the “Pacific family”, but of course, his vision of the “Pacific Family” is one in which Australia and New Zealand hold all the power. Chances are, as ANZAC forces are deployed to reinforce the rule of capital, representatives of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) will come rolling in after them with shiny localised treaties, seemingly offering an escape valve for the parasitic ruling class of the Pacific.

The tasks facing us

“Today the imperialist bourgeoisie militarises the youth as well as the adults; tomorrow it may begin militarising the women. Our attitude should be: All the better! Full speed ahead! For the faster we move, the nearer shall we be to the armed uprising against capitalism.” – Vladimir Lenin, On the Disarmament Slogan

As communists, we cannot simply sit back and watch as imperialism raises the threat of generalised war, where the masses of the Pacific will be thrown into the meat grinder under the careless oversight of Australian officers. But to simply try and turn back time or push for a more isolated Pacific would be counterproductive, and politically negligent.

Communists in Australia and in New Zealand have the fundamental duty of fighting against the imperialist actions of their own state. This must include tearing up the Pukpuk treaty, forgiving of all debts from Pacific nations to Australia, and a crash ecological transition. However, we must also be realistic; the chances of a revolution in the heart of ANZAC imperialism at the current moment are non-existent.

As such, our current strategic task must be oriented towards regroupment and cohering a revolutionary program for the Pacific. This must reject the schema of socialism in one country, and instead look towards ensuring a revolutionary wave that overthrows imperialism, not only in the Pacific, but at home as well.

A socialist Polynesia and Melanesia, in fraternal alliance with a revolutionary Australia and New Zealand, would ensure a rapid uplift in the standards of living, as the resources of the entire region are poured into sweeping the legacy of imperialism into the dustbin of history.

Fiji’s 1987 General Election was the crossroads of years of tension and struggle, which climaxed with Col. Sitiveni Rabuka’s coup on May 14th of that year. While the first coup was a tragedy, the second in October 1987 was certainly a farce. Temokalati brings you the background to the first coup, the events between the first and second, and lessons for socialists.

Feature image: Still from BBC’s Everyman TV. S13 E10 Paradise in Peril.

“I am not really a fanatic as most would like to believe, and I’m no extremist. I believe that if you asked a few more people around, they will say that I’m a real moderate… but could a moderate execute two coups? Perhaps the answer could be yes, if he firmly believes that it is the calling of God…” Sitiveni Rabuka to Martin Young (3:40)

Thursday, May 14th, 1987, 10am. Ten men armed with 9mm pistols burst into Fiji’s parliament. Under the orders of Col. Sitiveni Rabuka, the men, alongside the Colonel, captured PM Timoci Bavadra and other parliamentarians, spiriting them away to the Queen Elizabeth barracks. For the first time in Fiji’s history, but certainly not the last, the government had been overthrown in a coup.

Colonial tensions

British colonialists occupied Fiji in the 19th century, establishing an official British colony in 1874. Plantations were established across Fiji, in particular Viti Levu (the largest and main island in the Fiji island group), to grow cotton and other cash crops. In the late 1870s, a decision was made by British colonial authorities to “import” labourers to work on the plantations – so on May 14th, 1879, hundreds of indentured labourers from India arrived in Fiji.

Following the abolition of slavery in the British Empire with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, a new system of legal slavery was established, that being indenture. Under the indenture system, labourers agree to exorbitant legal contracts which bind them to an employer for a period of time, after which they are “free” to do as they wish. Many Indians participated in the indenture system to escape the abject poverty of colonised India, with the promise of a better life afterwards. Over one million Indians participated in this system, emigrating from India to other British colonies to work as indentured labourers. Over four hundred were sent to Fiji in the late 1870s, the first of many more waves of immigrants from India.

British authorities had brought over these indentured Indian labourers with no real regard as to what they’d do once their indenture ended. Many opted to remain in Fiji, as it was preferable to returning to India. This influx of Indian immigrants, along with the associated laws implemented by the colonial authorities, created racial and cultural tensions between the Indians and native Fijians, who viewed the immigrants with disdain. Racial tensions persisted throughout the colonial period, and continue to this day.

While native Fijians were bound by traditional laws alongside colonial laws, Indian immigrants who had served their indenture experienced relative freedom afterwards. This was because Indian migrants were not bound by the same traditional laws and customs as most native Fijians. Despite this, native Fijians owned land and had inter-generational community networks which Indo-Fijians lacked. This created a dynamic where, despite being on average poorer than the native Fijians, the Indo-Fijians were better positioned to enter Fiji’s colonial bureaucracy and growing private sector. This economic disparity only heightened tensions between the two groups.

Pre-existing racial tensions were (and remain) beneficial to traditional elites in Fiji. In a rapidly modernising country, their dwindling authority is threatened in a capitalist economy where Indo-Fijians play and increasingly greater role. This in turn threatens the long held privileges and powers of these elites. Unlike the Tupou monarchy and its aristocratic friends in Tonga, the aristocrats and traditional nobility of Fiji were not lucky enough to integrate themselves, near seamlessly, into Fiji’s developing capitalist economy. Since Fiji was absorbed wholly into the British Empire, unlike in Tonga, where nominal independence was maintained, there was no native monarchy for the nobility to organise itself around. Instead, they became relegated to the House of Chiefs.

This nobility stoked racial tensions through the various Taukei movements; pro-Native interest groups that more often than not formed reactionary political bases for traditional elites. Taukei leaders would come to support and provide backing to Rabuka in 1987.

Fiji’s military was, at the time, mainly used as auxiliaries for UN peacekeeping forces overseas. Rabuka himself cut his teeth peacekeeping in Lebanon in the early ’80s during the civil war. Their main recruiting base were young, rural native Fijians who lived in the undeveloped regions of the islands. Fears of an “Indian takeover” were easy to stoke in rural Fijians who found themselves economically disadvantaged in urban Suva, where Indo-Fijians were more prominent. This was further developed by the chiefs, who viewed a coup a necessary act to defend Fiji’s native traditions.

The 1987 General Election

Fiji held a general election in April 1987. It was a tight race between the Fijian Labour Party’s (FLP) coalition with the predominantly Indo-Fijian National Federation Party (NFP), and PM Kamisese Mara’s Alliance Party. The FLP-NFP coalition was led by Timoci Bavadra, the native Fijian founder of the FLP. Although the Alliance Party won the greater share of the popular vote, the FLP-NFP coalition managed to gain more seats, propelling Bavadra into leadership. The Alliance Party also lost votes to Sakeasi Butadroka’s Nationalist Party, which ran an uncomprisingly racist campaign to modify the Fijian Constitution, with the aim of goading the British Empire into repatriating all Indians from Fiji.

Bavadra was a medical doctor who founded the FLP alongside unionists from the Fiji Trade Unions Congress, which remains connected to the FLP. Representing Fijian workers, the FLP gained the support of both Indo-Fijian and native Fijian workers, managing to cross racial lines that were maintained by the other parties. However, the majority of Bavadra’s coalition were Indo-Fijian, with only seven of the twenty-eight members being native Fijian. Many members were also elected to constituencies in Fiji that were majority Indo-Fijian or had a substantial Indo-Fijian population. This would only make Bavadra more of an enemy to the rising Taukei movement, the elite backers of which opposed sharing power with Indo-Fijians.

After Bavadra’s victory in the general election, the Taukei movement went into full steam to obstruct, disrupt, and ultimately wreck Bavadra’s government. They supported the Alliance Party, and Taukei leaders like Apisai Tora were Alliance members, although the party officially denied any involvement with them. The Alliance Party’s attempts to use racism to stoke fears of an “Indian takeover” failed to mobilise Fijians to vote for Mara, instead driving many Fijians to vote for the moderate, inclusive FLP.

The Taukei’s campaign of disruption and sabotage would eventually escalate, with Tora heading meetings of protesting villagers who would demand the liquidation of Bavadra’s coalition. Butadroka would continue his racist campaign for the repatriation of Indians. Alliance would eventually ape Butadroka by adopting a nationalist, and racial, political policy regarding Indians. Protests would escalate into villagers blockading roads to try and sabotage the government. The constant agitation against Bavadra’s coalition would, however, soon climax.

May 14th, 1987…

It was no coincidence that Col. Rabuka chose May 14th, the day the British colonialists brought Indian indentured labourers into Fiji in 1879, to stage his coup. Rabuka ostensibly carried out this coup “to prevent a bloody situation in our beloved country, and a devastation of homes and businesses” (according to his own statement made to Radio Fiji later that year in September). This claim has only mild validity: for weeks prior, Taukei supporters had caused a ruckus across Fiji, from large protests to blockades and scuffles in rural villages. However, Rabuka was a supporter of the Taukei movement, and thus it makes little sense for Rabuka to claim he carried out his coup to prevent further mischief.

International response was swift: Australia and New Zealand suspended foreign aid to Fiji (alongside the United States and Britain), and did not acknowledge Rabuka’s government as legitimate. Five Australian navy warships were positioned near Fiji for a potential evacuation as part of the proposed Operation Morris Dance, but were soon withdrawn. Fiji’s economy was on the verge of going bust.

Ratu Kamisese Mara, the Alliance Party leader and Taukei supporter, did not denounce the coup. This lent credence to fears that Alliance supported the coup, and that they encouraged Rabuka to overthrow Bavadra alongside Taukei leaders. Once Bavadra was dealt with, Rabuka only had one more obstacle: Governor-General Ratu Penaia Ganilau. Ganilau had served as Minister for Fijian Affairs from 1975 until 1983 when he was appointed Governor-General. In spite of attempts by the incarcerated ministers to reach out to Ganilau, it was Rabuka, not Bavadra, who got his first words in with the old chief. This encounter is described in Brij V. Lal’s 2010 book In the eye of the storm:

Soon after taking over Parliament, Rabuka went up to Government House to personally inform Ratu Penaia of the momentous event which had just taken place… Rabuka spoke feelingly and respectfully as Ganilau was his traditional chief and the two had been ‘very, very close together’ for some time. Ratu Penaia responded only with mild rebuke rather than consternation, as the occasion demanded. (p. 396)

As Governor-General, Ganilau intended to protect constitutional government in Fiji. To this effect, he commissioned a review of the Fijian constitution which was to be overseen by the Falvey committee, a committee led by NZ-born Fijian lawyer John Falvey, in July of that year. Falvey had served as Attorney-General of Fiji from 1970 to 1977, after which he chaired senate committees. The result of Falvey’s committee was a report outlining a new legislature. In the interests of “strengthening the representation of Indigenous Fijians, and in doing so bear in mind the best interests of other peoples in Fiji” (Terms of Reference, In the eye of the storm, p. 390), it recommended a new legislature which enshrined political control for native Fijians, disempowering Fijians of other ethnicities (such as Indo-Fijians and Rotumans).

Falvey’s committee and their findings sought to resolve the racial tensions between native Fijians and Indo-Fijians by empowering the former and underming the democratic participation of the latter. After all, it could be reasoned, Fiji could avoid further turmoil and mischief from Taukei rabble-rousers if they were given concessions. However, the implementation of such an undemocratic, racist governmental system would only set the stage for further turmoil from non-native Fijian nationalities further on down the line. Effectively, Falvey and others would be passing the buck to a later Fijian government further down the line.

In September, with the review’s findings at hand, attempts were made to reconcile the two opposing forces (the FLP-NFP coalition on the one hand, Alliance on the other) to try and form a united national government. This was not helped by Ganilau dissolving parliament and pardoning Rabuka later in July. Kenyan constitutional law expert Yash Ghai was soon flown into the country to help draft a conciliatory agreement in early September. The now free Bavadra, returning to Fiji after months spent overseas pleading for support from world leaders, would represent the FLP-NFP coalition, while Ratu Mara would represent the Alliance Party.

Ganilau’s dissolution of parliament and pardoning of Rabuka was not left untouched by Bavadra. Upon his return from his overseas pleading, he launched a challenge against Ganilau’s decision in the supreme court. As Ganilau had dissolved parliament without Bavadra’s assent as PM, the Governor-General had acted in contravention of Fiji’s constitution. This strengthened Bavadra’s case. Bavadra and Mara would continue their negotiations, with Ghai helping develop the ‘Deuba Accord’ (named after the village of Deuba in Fiji). Under this accord, a new government would be established which would include both the FLP-NFP coalition and the Alliance Party.

Although he had been pardoned and put in charge of Fiji’s Armed Forces (another dubious decision made by Ganilau), Rabuka knew his position was less than rock solid. Despite holding all the cards after his coup in May, he refrained from establishing a full military government. This left the rest of the state – the Supreme Court, the Governor-Generalship, etc, to scramble to save what little remained of Fiji’s constitutional governance. This had little help from Governor-General Ratu Ganilau, who made conciliatory overtures to Rabuka. With a Supreme Court challenge on the way, and the Deuba Accord seemingly resolving, in the short term, tensions between Bavadra’s and Mara’s parties, Rabuka was in between a rock and a hard place.

Only two days after the so-called ‘Deuba Accord’ was agreed upon, Rabuka made his move. Rabuka’s second sweep would be far more widespread than his first: journalists, politicians, judges, and other potential dissidents were all arrested, including Bavadra. Newspapers were banned and shut down. Fijian soldiers in the streets of Suva banned journalists from taking photos or investigating the events taking place. In a dramatic address to the nation, Rabuka declared Fiji a republic “governed by the Indigenous Fijian race for their advancement and welfare”.

Fiji, a native republic?

You could be tempted to view Rabuka’s second coup as a kind of bonapartist revolt. His military government swept away the monarchist windowdressing of Fiji’s previous governments, establishing a republican constitution and supplanting the Governor-General, and by extension the British monarch, with a native President. Fiji’s first president would be the former Governor-General, Ratu Penaia Ganilau. Fiji was quickly denounced by their former colonial overlords, and swiftly ousted from the Commonwealth.

You could also be tempted to view Rabuka’s second coup as an act of decolonisation. For sure, it got rid of nominal British colonial governance and established a republican government under the control of Fiji’s native population. But without considering the ongoing racial tensions within Fiji, and Rabuka’s role as a supporter and figurehead for the nativist Taukei movement, this paints an inaccurate picture of what happened.

Of course, while Fiji has a native government, and is no longer under nominal (or direct) colonial control, it is nonetheless bound to the whims of the colonial countries anyway; first Britain, now the United States and Australia. Far from the climax of a struggle for democracy and liberation, the establishment of a republic in Fiji was a counter-revolutionary sweep by a nativist movement that was anxious to share power with minority ethnic groups, in particular the Indo-Fijians. This movement saw the establishment of a native-run republic through Rabuka’s coup as the best way to, feebly, defend the last remaining privileges they still had.

The events of 1987, and subsequent coups in Fiji, demonstrate the danger posed by questionably loyal state militaries. Socialists call for the dissolution of standing armies and for their replacement by a universal militia of workers and toilers. Such a popular militia would not be a sword of Damocles over democracy: it would, in fact, strengthen democracy for workers and toilers. Rabuka was for the most part let off the hook for these coups, and is now Prime Minister, having been elected in 2022. He has since “apologised” for “his role” in the coup (he had a “role” in it, for sure!) and looks back on the events of 1987 as being regrettable, but necessary.

For socialists, the lesson is clear. We cannot rely on the standing army to act as an iron fist against the capitalist state, and while we should struggle to split the army along class lines, we should view it with suspicion. Any future socialist government would be easily threatened by influential army officers who, perhaps inspired by past tragedies, decide to launch farces of their own.

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Photo: Chinese embassy in Nuku'alofa, Tonga. 2007.

Joseph Davidson-Labout writes on the role China plays in the Pacific, with a focus on China’s big-power relationship with Tonga.

Tonga’s democratic movement reached a climax in 2006 when, after Tonga’s parliament closed for the year with no prospects of implementing democratic reform, workers and toilers took to the streets in what would become the infamous Nuku’alofa riots. These riots, taking place in a country most of the world thought was docile and passive, captured the attention of the entire Asia-Pacific region, from Australia to the at the time fledgling China.

The reconstruction of the capital was largely financed by Chinese state loans. Tonga borrowed roughly $190 million. Twenty years on, the debt remains. China saw an opening to change the nature of its relationship with the Pacific, from one that viewed the region as peripheral, to something far more central in its wider project. In the same year, the first China-Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Leaders Forum was held in Fiji. It marked a clear acceleration of China’s trade, development, and aid relationship with the Pacific. However, as loan grace periods expire, and debt servicing increases, the Pacific finds itself in a deficit crisis with Beijing which threatens further development in the region.

Introduced in 2013 by Xi Jinping, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—alluringly also referred to as the New Silk Road—is an enormous global infrastructure project tasked with connecting trade between 150 countries across key overland and maritime corridors. The project’s key areas of investment are in the construction of transport infrastructure, energy generation, raw material acquisition and processing, and education. It is posited as among the biggest infrastructure projects in history. Countries involved in the BRI account for nearly three quarters of the global population, almost all of the Global South. Infrastructure projects are generally financed by development loans from Chinese state-owned policy banks. As such, Beijing is now the world’s largest single creditor, having over $1 trillion owed to it.

What distinguishes the BRI from earlier waves of development finance is not strictly its scale, but its underlying logic. Development loans from China are generally faster and less conditional than loans from Western institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, meaning developing countries are not required to undergo widespread structural changes in return for liquidity. However, the projects built under the BRI overtly serve the accumulation needs of Chinese capital. Mines extract resources; roads leads to ports; ports facilitate exports; exports are integrated into Chinese industrial supply chains. The BRI is, like other projects of its kind, an appropriation of surplus capital and labour, in the interests of Chinese multinationals. This creates unjust relationships of dependency with the Global South. The Pacific has not been spared from this appropriation. The regions proximity, vast resources, and economic conditions made it an obvious area of opportunity for the initiative.

Development loans from Chinese policy banks are typically issued with a three-to-five year grace period, before the commencement of a repayment schedule, up to twenty years. While Beijing had been accepting payment deferrals throughout pandemic-related economic turbulence, the 2020s were supposed to be the peak repayment decade. It has become clear that as internal political and economic struggles compound in Pacific states, these loans will not be paid off in time. China has been shifting away from its current model of loan-based outward development towards a grant-based system, so as to not risk jeopardising its current and future position as a key creditor in the Pacific. Grant-based commitments have nearly doubled compared to the pre-pandemic average, and has led to far higher engagement in local projects with lower individual spending. This means rather than development policy being centred on nationwide debt-driven projects, Beijing has turned its focus on local political actors in Pacific countries, injecting funds into education, healthcare, and emergency services at a far more targeted level.

Such an approach not only has different fiscal implications for Pacific states, as these generally do not require repayment, but also changes China’s influence on the day to day lives of Pacific peoples. The provision of Chinese doctors, medical equipment, classroom computers, farming supplies, etc, to countries in the Global South, are all acts of soft power. While the danger is not sole domination by China, this new hegemony perpetuates historical patterns of exploitation, through a growing web of material dependencies and institutional relationships shaping the social fabric of the region.

The Export-Import (EXIM) Bank of China, one of three Chinese state policy banks tasked with outward investment and a primary financier of the Belt and Road Initiative, is now Tonga’s single largest bilateral creditor. Chinese development loans account for close to half of the country’s external debt. Samoa and Vanuatu find themselves in almost identical positions, straddled a ballooning debt crises.

The Lowy Institute’s Pacific Aid Map tool reports 729 China-backed projects across the region being financed since 2008, with a total committed spending of $6.2 billion. Almost half of this spending is going to Papua New Guinea, the first Pacific nation to sign a bilateral BRI accord and one of the least developed countries in the region. Of Chinese investment in PNG, a third is in resource extraction and minerals. The Ramu Nickel-Cobalt Project, financed with a $560 million loan from EXIM in 2008, is among the largest in the world and a cornerstone of Beijing’s BRI. The loan, which financed only 70% of the project, has not been fully paid off 18 years later. The remaining costs of the mine where paid for with equity arrangements; much of the generated surplus from the extraction of PNG’s minerals travelled offshore to Chinese joint venture company MCC-JJJ to pay for a $473 million syndicated shareholder loan.

China has financed over 110 other development projects across the Kingdom since the rebuilding of Nuku’alofa. Notably; ten agricultural initiatives, most of which with unspecified spending distribution, which vaguely aim to “introduce Chinese agricultural technologies”, thirteen embassy-facilitated educational projects including classroom renovations, technology donations, and Chinese language-learning programs, sixteen healthcare developments, including during the pandemic, through the building of clinics and provision of equipment and doctors.

Across Fiji and Samoa, as well as in Tonga, China has invested in roads, bridges, and freight infrastructure, consistent with their global BRI agenda. Control over the ports, roads, and trade infrastructure facilitates and maintains access to resources. While not as overt as the case of PNG, the groundwork is seemingly being laid in the rest of the region. China appears to be eyeing up the fisheries and sea-bed minerals of the vast exclusive economic zones of the Islands. Western critique is quick to label China’s presence in the Global South as “debt-trap diplomacy”. This framing is deliberately seductive, designed to deflect the Global North’s own legacy of colonial violence. The vulnerability of the Pacific to external exploitation predates Beijing’s involvement.

Kia ora koutou friends, supporters, and readers,

We are very excited to release the first issue of Temokalati, Summer 2025-2026. It will primarily be a digital release while we raise money for a print run.

In the mean time, we hope you enjoy this first issue. If you do, share it with friends and colleagues, and consider financially supporting Temokalati through donating as little as AUD$2: https://ko-fi.com/temokalati.

Temokalati is a unique project on the international, and in particular Australian/NZer Left, and we hope you come to support us in the long term. We are planning on a quarterly release schedule.

We want to engage our readers by developing a relatively active letters section. We therefore encourage readers to send their thoughts, questions, concerns, and commentaries to us through email: [email protected]

We are looking for writers primarily from a Pasifika (Pacific Island/Oceanian) background. We want to publish a broad range of left-wing, progressive, and socialist views of activists, militants, workers/toilers, and otherwise politically engaged Pacific Islanders. To contribute to Temokalati, you should contact us via email (see above).

How can the working class, a small but developing class in the Pacific countries, fight for national liberation against the imperialists and their supporters?

Laurie Aarons (Communist Party of Australia) in Jakarta, 1954. Photo: Tribune archive.

An Ocean of Class Peace?

The Pacific historically has been an arena long overlooked by the international left. Outside of periods of mass social crisis (see Kanaky 1981 and 2024, Tonga 2006, Vanuatu 2022), the Pacific is under-analysed in terms of class struggle. The countries which border it (and often exploit it) are treated with much deeper research and care in comparison. How many publications have poured out across the world analysing class struggle in America, China, Japan, Australia, Korea, Indonesia, New Zealand, and South America? Potentially, the most prominent work on the class struggle in Polynesia, and through that the broader Pacific, is the Spartacist League of New Zealand’s 1981 text Towards a Socialist Polynesia. Despite being politically weak, the text remains historically relevant if only because it tries to give a communist perspective on what communists should be doing in the Pacific region. It also emphasises the need for an international revolution which can sweep away the left-overs of feudalism, and free the region from capitalism and imperialism.

The Pacific is defined historically by its respective colonial occupations, much of which took place in the 19th century. Most of the countries in the Pacific region, with the exception of Tonga, were under the control of various colonial and imperialist powers (some still are!), such as the Americans, the British, and at various points, the Japanese. Ignoring the existence of social classes in the Pacific often leads people to defining the Pacific solely by its colonial occupations, and not as a living region with people who struggle independently for their liberation. While Liberals see the Pacific as an intermediary region between China and Australia/New Zealand/America, Marxists see the Pacific as a region peripheral to capitalism, and exploited on that basis. It therefore follows that Marxists see the only path out of this exploitation being through the struggle of Pacific workers and toilers.

In 1848, Marx wrote that “the history of all hitherto existing societies, is the history of class struggle.” This history includes the Pacific, though it is often forgotten. There is a long history of class struggle and industrial action in the Pacific region. This includes the 2005 Public Servants strike in Tonga, the 2006 riot, the many general strikes in the Solomon Islands, and the long history of industrial actions and organising in Fiji. Everything in the Pacific, from language, culture, and clothing, to living standards, wages, and the status of women, has been shaped by the struggle of one class (the workers and toilers) against another (nobles and capitalists). In turn, the nature of this struggle is shaped by the imperialist domination, exploitation, and control of the Pacific.

Mass struggles across the Pacific have taken place over the last century, and have seen the emergence of an undeveloped, but growing, Pasifika working class. This working class fights a battle not just for the interests of their class, in alliance with the toilers, but also a struggle for democratic rights and liberties, against the imperialists and feudalists. Major outbursts in the struggle by Pasifika workers are often suppressed by imperialist forces from Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. This is to ensure the enduring security of imperialist ventures in the Pacific, from banking, to shipping, to mineral extraction.

At the same time, thousands of workers from across the Pacific travel to the pacific rim countries (mainly, Australia and New Zealand, but also America) to work for horrendous wages, in intensely poor conditions, in order to send money back to their home countries. In 2023, 50% of Tonga’s GDP was remittances (money sent from foreign workers to their family in their home country). This sharpens and develops the Pasifika working class, who, in working in the imperialist countries, enter unions and develop basic union consciousness. The task is to ensure that when these workers return to their home countries, they bring this consciousness with them.

The struggle for democracy and the struggle for national liberation are inseparable. The democratic aspirations of the Pasifika workers and toilers will always be suppressed by the imperialists and their supporters: the chiefs, nobles, and capitalists. Therefore, any struggle for democracy which does not aim to break the control of imperialism is a struggle doomed to fail, as we see time and time again with the democratic movement in Tonga.

It’s up to communists to combine these struggles, and present a revolutionary program which aims to accomplish both the overthrow of the imperialists, the overthrow of the domestic oppressors, and the establishment of a democratic, emancipatory system. It’s also up to communists to win the Pasifika workers and toilers to the global struggle – as the struggle against capitalism, against imperialism, and for emancipation, is by its nature a global struggle. We can’t struggle against the capitalists in Canberra and Washington without working alongside the militant workers of Australia and the U.S.

Fijian workers in Australia as part of the ‘PALM scheme’, allowing Australian businesses to hire workers directly from nine Pacific countries, including Fiji and Tonga. Photo: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Government of Australia.

No road forward with the chiefs

In struggles against imperialism, there’s always a layer of home-grown capitalists who position themselves as being against imperialism. This layer, often made up of the ‘middle class’ and small capitalists, aim to present themselves as the only viable alternative to foreign imperialists. They frame their struggle in terms of opposing foreign ownership, and reinvigorating the domestic economy. In the Pacific, this layer often includes local chiefs, and sometimes, nobles. Through good sounding slogans and community ties, they are able to trick the workers and toilers into supporting them. But this layer of home-grown capitalists and nobles struggle against imperialism only to the extent that they can carve out space for themselves, so they can supplant the imperialists and make the profit instead. They have no genuine interest in national liberation.

Their interests as a class point them toward alliances and compromises with imperialism. Centuries ago, the nobles, chiefs and warlords of the Pacific made alliances both with each other and with European colonialists. In many cases, this led to their total subordination to colonial powers, such as in Fiji and Samoa. In Tonga, the nobility was able to forge an alliance with British colonialists which prevented Tonga’s direct colonisation, at the cost of Tonga tagging along with Britain in its imperialist adventures. This continues to this day: instead of Britain, Tonga tags along with the U.S. in its own imperialist adventures, such as its cruel and murderous invasion of Iraq. Only now, centuries later, do the nobles and chiefs realise that their deal with the devil was not to their advantage.

When liberal democrats in the Pacific emerge and claim to oppose imperialism and domination, more often than not they turn renegade, and attack the forces that supported them. In Tonga, Clive Edwards, once a “pro-democratic” politician, now supports the royalty in suppressing the workers and toilers, claiming that democracy is “too expensive”. In Fiji, in spite of the promises of politicians and soldiers, nothing has improved in the struggle for democracy. Military rule looms like a sword of Damocles over the Fijian masses. The masses must not put their trust in these deceivers and misleaders. They have no genuine interest in overthrowing imperialism, and have made this clear time and time again.

Permanent Revolution & the Pacific

Throughout the 20th century, the official communist movement (situated in Moscow, USSR) defended the “stageist” theory of revolution. This theory posited that in order for socialism to be possible, there must first be a liberal-democratic revolution, and a period of capitalist rule. This resulted in the official communist movement (the “Marxist-Leninists”) supporting alliances between the workers, toilers, and the aforementioned home-grown capitalists, the “national bourgeoisie” as they are called. This policy was upheld for decades, in countries such as South Africa, China (where a revolution won power in 1949), Algeria, Mozambique, and other ‘third-world’ countries. This strategy has failed again. In China, where the revolution succeeded, the alliance with the “national bourgeoisie” rapidly deteriorated. After 1949, they fled to Taiwan, and formed a U.S. puppet government in Taipei intent on destroying the revolution! In the worst examples, such as Algeria, the communists simply lost to the liberal and conservative wings of the national liberation movement. There is only one pathway to liberation for the Pacific: a revolutionary socialist movement, made up of the workers and toilers, opposed to the capitalists (foreign and domestic), imperialists, nobles, and oppressors.

The workers, in alliance with the toilers, must lead the struggle against imperialism and capitalism. This is the only way to struggle for national liberation, as alliances with capitalists will lead to capitulation and failure. Numerous questions and tensions remain unanswered by the liberal, pro-capitalist “democrats”. What to do about the parasites (kings, bishops, nobles)? How to distribute the land? How to resolve the oppression of women? These questions are vital, but cannot be resolved while under the domination of imperialism.

Against this imperialist-feudal collaboration, the workers must forge an alliance with the peasantry and commit itself to a revolution against both pillars of oppression. They must commit themselves to a revolution in permanence, driving the capitalists and imperialists before them, until the Pacific is united under the red banner of freedom, socialism, and democracy.

Bernard M. of Organise Aotearoa writes on the West Papuan struggle against Indonesian settler-colonialism, and how the West Papuan struggle fits in the politics of the Asia-Pacific.

Free West Papua activists join rally for Palestine in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland). Photo: WP News.

Papua is a large island situated to the north of Australia. On the eastern half of the island is the independent state of Papua New Guinea, a former colony which ostensibly declared independence from Australia in 1975. The western half of the island is, officially, part of the Republic of Indonesia. In 1961, the western half of the island was poised to declare independence as the Republic of West Papua. Betrayed by their Dutch rulers and occupied by Indonesia, the West Papuans have waged a struggle for independence continuously since the occupation began.

Historical background

The colonial period of Papuan history began in the 16th century, when the Sultanates of Tidore and Ternate began establishing trading enclaves along the western coast of Papua. These sultanates carved out a powerful empire in the eastern part of the Indonesian archipelago, and even after the Dutch conquest in the 17th century, continued to rule as Dutch proxies until the 19th century, when the Dutch brought the region more under their direct administration.

This lasted until the second world war, when the region was conquered by Japan. While Japanese rule was itself oppressive, the power vacuum created once they surrendered gave crucial space for the Indonesian independence movement to launch an all out struggle against the Dutch.

The central vehicle for this struggle was the nascent Republic of Indonesia, which was formed in Java and pushed a largely unitary and Java-centric idea of Indonesia. As the Dutch saw their rule collapsing, they began attempting to build legitimacy through promoting an alternative vision of Indonesia, promoting the interest of non-Javanese groups and attempting to build up federal infrastructure in the eastern half of the archipelago. When independence came in 1949, part of the condition was that the new government recognise these federal structures.

However, the Dutch refused to transfer sovereignty of West Papua to the new Indonesian state, citing the West Papuans’ distinct national identity. In Jakarta this was seen as proof of what they had always suspected: that any agitation for minority rights was actually a neo-colonial ploy to undermine their sovereignty. The question of what West Papuans wanted was not considered at all.

The Dutch continued to rule West Papua as ‘Dutch New Guinea’ for the rest of the decade. Initially, independence was not considered in the short term but, ironically, this changed as a result of increasing military pressure from Indonesia. Elections were held, resulting in the creation of the New Guinea Council in 1961. On 1st December 1961, the new national flag of West Papua was raised for the first time, an occasion that is still commemorated among the West Papuan diaspora and illegal to commemorate in West Papua itself.

Indonesia during this period was one of the leading voices of the Non-Aligned Movement, a loose alliance of formerly colonised states. In a few years, the US will back a violent coup in Indonesia to realign them to western interests, but at this point it was attempting to use diplomacy to do so. Indonesia’s ongoing conflict with the Netherlands, a key NATO ally, was a hurdle for this. The US began to put pressure on the Dutch to resolve the ‘West New Guinea dispute’, eventually culminating in the 1962 New York Agreement, in which the Dutch abandoned West Papua on the condition that the Indonesians organise a referendum on West Papuan independence.

Indonesia sent in the military to take over administration of West Papua and immediately began to violently suppress independent political organisations. They held what was officially known as the Act of Free Choice, but is more commonly known among Papuans as the Act of No Choice. The Indonesians claimed that Papuans were too tribal to understand a one-person, one vote secret ballot, hand-picked 1,025 Papuan elders and had them hold a musyawarah, a traditional Indonesian form consensus-based village meeting, while surrounded by Indonesian soldiers. Naturally, this resulted in them agreeing to incorporation into Indonesia. This was accepted by UN observers, who were mostly just there to rubber stamp the proceedings. Indonesia’s occupation was officially given international legitimacy.

Act of free choice (Penentuan Pendapat Rakyat, Pepera) in 1969 (Permana, 2016)

Current situation

Indonesia’s administration of West Papua has been one of straightforward settler colonialism. Under a policy known as ‘transmigration’, which was inherited from the Dutch, the Indonesian government relocated thousands of landless Indonesians to West Papua, resulting in a drastic demographic and cultural shift in most of West Papua’s urban centres. This program ended in 2015, but migration from Indonesia into West Papua is still highly encouraged by the government.

Indonesia’s colonial policy is partly assimilationist. Sanitised versions of West Papuan culture are periodically deployed as part of Indonesia’s professed image as a nation “Unified in Diversity”. Meanwhile, usage of Bahasa Indonesia has been made compulsory across the education system, resulting in Bahasa becoming the lingua franca among West Papuans. This familiarity with Bahasa, and Indonesian culture more generally, can be seen in the slogan of the independence movement itself. Papua Merdeka, or ‘Free Papua’, uses the Bahasa word Merdeka, which has powerful connotations in Indonesia due to its usage during their independence struggle.

Despite this element of assimilationism, the Indonesian government is ultimately not too focused on integrating Papuans. No policies have been taken to foster the creation of a Papuan working class to exploit, and attempts to create a Papuan collaborator class have been lacking, and usually undermined by an unwillingness to protect collaborators from racism. Rather, Indonesia’s main goal is West Papua’s resources, and the West Papuan people are just an obstacle.

Indonesia’s presence in West Papua has been characterised by the worst sort of extractivism. The Indonesian government’s single biggest source of revenue is West Papuan gold and copper, ripped out of the earth in a colossal mine known as Grasberg - one of the world’s largest single sources of gold and copper. West Papua’s forests are being destroyed to harvest Kwila, a vibrant red tree native to Papua that takes 75 to 80 years to mature, and is mostly used for building decks in Australia and New Zealand. Forest that isn’t being harvested for lumber is being converted into environmentally damaging Palm Oil plantations or, increasingly, agricultural land. West Papua has become central to President Prabowo’s pet project of making Indonesia a ‘Global Food Barn’. In Merauke, near the border with Papua New Guinea, 1.3 million hectares have already been set aside, 50% for food crops, 30% for sugarcane and 20% for Palm Oil. Probowo’s ultimate goal is to create 3 million hectares of new agricultural land - 2 million for rice and 1 million for sugarcane.

With all of this extraction - whether of gold, timber or crops - comes the military. First to forcibly seize the land, and then to provide ‘security’ once the local population begins to resist these seizures. Indonesian security forces routinely deploy violence against Papuans. Usage of tear gas, live fire, rape and torture have all been reported, with Indonesian security forces generally attempting to shift blame to West Papuan independence fighters, despite regularly being caught on camera. With the recent election of Prabowo Subianto, a hard-line reactionary and war criminal, violence in West Papua is increasing exponentially.

Organisations of the West Papuan independence struggle

OPM-TPN (Free Papua Organisation – National Liberation Army): The OPM was the first major organisation to agitate for West Papuan independence. Formed in 1965, the OPM, through its armed wing the TPN, believed that violent resistance was the only way to gain independence. The OPM was the dominant independence organisation within West Papua until 1976 when there was split between one of the founders of the TPN, Jacob Prai, and the TPN’s military strategist, Seth Rumkorem. While this split ended OPM’s organisational dominance, figures from the OPM have continued to play an important part in basically all of the major factions in West Papua, and the organisation still maintains an important symbolic position within the movement.

ULMWP (United Liberation Movement for West Papua): The ULMWP was formed on 7 December 2014, as a unification of three groups; the West Papua National Coalition for Liberation (WPNCL), the Federal Republic of West Papua (NRFPB) and the National Parliament of West Papua (NPWP)/West Papua National Committee (KNPB). The ULMWP formed in Vanuatu as a united front in order to apply for membership of the Melanesian Spearhead Group, an important regional organisation of Melanesian states. The ULMWP has not managed to achieve more than Observer status within the MSG, however it has served as an important representative of West Papua on the international stage and its president, Benny Wenda, has had success building up ULMWP’s legitimacy as a representative of the West Papuan people. Since December 2020 the ULMWP formed a ‘Provisional Government’ and has been building and designing organisational and constitutional structures since then to prepare for a Unilateral Declaration of Independence.

WPNCL (West Papua National Coalition for Liberation): One of the core organisations behind the ULMWP, the WPNCL had a large OPM contingent amongst its founding members. Despite this, for much of its history the WPNCL has pushed primarily for independence through dialogue with Indonesia. WPNCL is associated with the older generation of West Papuan independence activists.

NRFPB (Federal Republic of West Papua): Declared in October 2011, the NRFPB is another claimant government for West Papua, separate from the ‘Provisional Government’ of the ULMWP.

KNPB (West Papua National Committee)/ NPWP (National Parliament of West Papua): The KNPB was founded in November 2010 out of the Student’s Movement, as a way to support the International Parliamentarians for West Papua (IPWP) and the International Lawyers for West Papua (ILWP) both organisationally and as a media clearing house. Led by Victor Yeimo and Buchtar Tabuni, KNPB works closely with all the major West Papuan groups and advocates for independence via referendum. In order to facilitate this the KNPB formed the NPWP as a network of regional organisations within West Papua, building up the local political representation.

Free West Papua campaign: The Free West Papua campaign is the international equivalent of the KNPB. Run out of Benny Wenda’s office, Free West Papua promotes and publicises news and statements about the West Papuan struggle to an international audience.

WPNA (West Papua National Authority): Another self-claimed provisional government, the WPNA is the most important organisation to have not been officially involved with the ULMWP. Sometimes referring to themselves as the Republic of West Melanesia, the WPNA was founded in August 2004 and was inspired by the ‘Nonviolent Movement’ which emerged in West Papua in the 80s. WPNA’s key demand currently is what they’re referring to as the ‘Washington Solution’, in which they hope that the US can mediate an agreement between them and the Indonesian government.

Soldiers of the TPNPB, the West Papua National Liberation Army.

West Papua, Indonesia and the Pacific

Core to the West Papuan independence struggle is a desire for West Papua to be part of Melanesia and wider Oceania, rather than a part of Asia. Regional solidarity has always been a strong component of Melanesian politics, and in the flaxroots movements West Papua has often had strong support across Oceania. However, Indonesia has long used its position as a regional power to diplomatically isolate West Papua from international support.

Indonesia plays an important role in America’s military infrastructure in the region, and this importance is only growing in the wake of the Obama era ‘Pivot to Asia’ and the Post-Obama ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’. As the US increasingly plays on a supposed Chinese security threat to tie more Pacific countries into a network of integrated military relationships, Indonesia is itself able to leverage its position as a military power within that network to tie smaller nations to its own foreign policy.

The two most egregious cases of this are Fiji and Papua New Guinea. Despite having the strongest ties to West Papua, and despite West Papuans own expressed affinity for their eastern siblings, PNG’s government has long ignored West Papua, and instead pursued a cordial relationship with Indonesia. PNG has even gone so far as to block the ULMWP’s bid to become a full member of the MSG and instead supported Indonesia’s right to speak on behalf of West Papuans as an associate member of the MSG. Ironically, this is largely due to the shared border with West Papua – instead of seeing this as a connection, the PNG government has long seen this border as a source of potential security issues and has built a strong relationship with Indonesia on the basis of securing this border.

As support for West Papua grows amongst the wider Oceanic community, PNG’s military relationship with Indonesia is also growing, with Jakarta and Port Moresby recently formalising an ongoing defence agreement whereby the two countries would co-operate on a series of ongoing military operations, and Indonesia committing to help build the capacity of PNG’s military.

Jakarta has pursued a similar strategy with Fiji. Historically a staunch advocate for Melanesian solidarity, in recent years the Fijian government has been bought out by the Indonesians, officially affirming a respect for Indonesia’s ‘territorial integrity’ in exchange for US$6 million in aid as well as ongoing training and infrastructural support for the Fijian military. Crucially, both this deal with Fiji and the deal with PNG involve officers training in Indonesia’s military schools – a move seen as creating long-lasting integration between two sets of militaries.

Indonesia’s military presence in the Pacific has long been criticised by the Australian government. However, the Australian government is equally invested in the military integration taking place as part of the US’s Indo-Pacific Strategy. Additionally, Australian capital is deeply involved in Indonesia’s occupation of West Papua. The Grasberg Mine is largely supplied from Australia, and Australian companies are heavily involved in the colonial lumber industry in West Papua.

However, West Papua is not without its allies. The government of Vanuatu, long a staunch supporter of Melanesian solidarity in general, has consistently supported the ULMWP’s right to be a full member of both the MSG and the Pacific Islands Forum, and has regularly pressured Indonesia over their treatment of West Papua. The Solomon Islands and Samoa have followed suit. All three are currently pressuring the Pacific Islands Forum to make a stand on West Papua, citing the increasing violence occurring in the region.

Even inside of Indonesia, solidarity with West Papua is beginning to grow. More and more groups like the Indonesian People’s Front for West Papua or the Papuan Lives Matter campaign are raising awareness of what is happening in West Papua, despite harsh repercussions from the government. As resistance to the increasingly reactionary government in Jakarta grows, there is hope that this new progressive wave in Indonesia may also see Indonesians willing to challenge the colonialism being done in their name.

Papuans protest in Intan Jaya, in Central Papua, West Papua, 28 October 2025. Photo: Free West Papua Campaign/FB.

Why West Papua matters

It always feels somewhat heartless to explain why a people’s struggle matters. That they’re struggling for the chance to exercise their right to self-determination and their right to live in peace feels like it should be enough. However, as socialists, we understand that asking these questions can deepen our commitment to a struggle and light the way towards the best way to win.

The plight of West Papua throws into stark relief many of the forces at play in Oceania. By following what countries and groups are willing to be complicit in Indonesia’s occupation and then tracing their economic or military ties back to Indonesia, one can create an incredibly clear picture of the shape of colonial capitalism in the region.

In a more ideological sense, solidarity with West Papua is important for challenging notions of Oceania as an empty region filled with islands populated solely by ‘savages’. Oceania has been effectively divided by white supremacist ideology, which hinders alternative visions for the region. Building solidarity within Australia and Polynesia with struggles in West Papua, and Melanesia more generally, breaks down these divisions and helps us build a new united vision for Oceania.

Environmentally, the West Papuan rainforest is incredibly important. It’s the largest continuous stretch of rainforest outside of the Amazon, and serves as the ‘lungs of the pacific’, pulling in huge amounts of CO2 and converting it to oxygen. It is also one of the most biodiverse regions in the world, much of which is unique to the island. West Papuan independence movements see preserving this rainforest as a key goal of independence - the ULMWP in particular has centred its constitutional proposals around West Papua being ‘the first Green State’.

The capitalist system is a sinking ship, and unless we fight for a better world, it will take us down with it.

Just like the Titanic, capitalism is presented as an unsinkable, stable system that will never collapse. However, just like the Titanic, it will soon sink in ways that will shock the world to its core.

The capitalist system has created a world with plenty of wealth but plenty more poverty and want. Food rots, uneaten, as food corporations would rather the food be destroyed than distributed freely, lest their profits suffer. Clothes, cars, furniture, electronics; all produced constantly in greater and greater number to be sold in international markets that can barely accommodate the volume. The atmosphere becomes full of carbon dioxide and harsh pollutants, as sea levels creep higher and higher. Things aren’t produced to serve human need – but to serve businesses aiming at selling everything that isn’t nailed down (including the nail gun).

Capitalism became the dominant system on Earth by sweeping away the old, backward social orders. Capital broke the chains of feudalism, freeing the serfs and peasants from absolutism and drudgery, but shackled them with new chains: wage labour and the market. All things became a commodity: items made to be bought, sold, exchanged, hoarded jealously in international markets. People become economic units, detached from the very world they work to build. This monstrous machine continues to poison the rivers, parch the land, and pollute the air, all in spite of the cries of workers and toilers across the world.

The chaos of the market pushes society to cycles of destruction and reconstruction. The constant need for the system to reproduce itself, often by cannibalising itself over and over again, creates crisis after crisis. Such a crisis is a feature of the system, not a bug. Commodities must continue to be produced, even if they can’t be sold, or else companies will lose profit, and spiral into bankruptcy. Commodities are produced even when people can’t afford them. Eventually, this causes a crisis in itself, and the system will once again eat itself alive to stay afloat, at the expense of workers and toilers.

This is a social order in rapid decay, which lives in spite of its own death drive.

The Pacific is a region at the forefront of the system’s slow, but destructive, decay. The climate crisis, accelerated by rampant mineral extraction and pollution by the imperialist countries (often outsourced to peripheral countries), is causing increasing sea levels to engulf the pacific island countries. For example, the government of Tuvalu made a deal with the imperialists in Canberra to allow Tuvaluans to emigrate to Australia and become permanent residents: such a deal is only necessary because the Canberra regime acts as a bodyguard for the capitalist system in the Asia-Pacific. While Australia pollutes and extracts, it is the tiny pacific countries that must pay the price, in particular the working people of these countries. By no means do the nobles and elites need to struggle as much as the rest of us. This treaty between Australia and Tuvalu signals the beginning of Australia’s consolidation of its control of the pacific: it is not hard to imagine that countries at risk of sinking, such as Kiribati, would want to pursue similar deals. Such deals offer nothing in terms of recompense or reparations for impacts Pasifika peoples – only wage slavery in the imperialist countries.

The struggle to overcome the capitalist system becomes more and more important each day, as the sea levels rise and the system threatens greater and greater crises. It is a system which perpetuates itself by keeping control over production in the hands of an increasingly shrinking class of business owners and administrators: if working people held control of production, they could restrain extraction, redistribute surplus based on need, and provide recompense to those impacted by the worst of climate change. The capacity to educate, feed, provide for, and ensure the prosperity of every person on Earth exists: it is simply kept away from us by the ruling class.

Tonga's 2006 riots were the culmination of decades of political struggle, not a simple outburst of 'gang violence', writes Max J for Partisan Magazine.

NZ soldier stands guard at Fua'amotu International Airport in Tonga, 2006

The 2006 riot

The first riots started at 3pm on Thursday, November 16th. The first targets of the rioters were government buildings in the capital city of Nuku’alofa. Then, they moved on to buildings owned by government officials and foreign banks, in particular ANZ and Westpac. Police stood on the sides of streets and watched helplessly as the violence took place, or perhaps they weren’t bothered to stop it. At the Chinatown Hotel, a gang of youths arrive, followed by a quarry truck. Despite the pleas of the hotel’s owners to spare the building, it too is soon torched with firebombs.

All sorts of people participated in the riots: the young, the elderly, men and women. But the more bombastic acts of violence – such as the firebombing, car tipping, the demolitions, were seemingly done primarily by younger men. By the end of the night, most of the capital city had been burnt to the ground. Tongan Police and military were scarcely able to retake control of the capital’s CBD.

Earlier that day, a crowd of several thousand gathered in Nuku’alofa, near Tongan Parliament. The expectation of the crowd was that the nobles, who were guaranteed seats in Parliament, would support parliamentary and electoral reforms which would, among other things, increase the number of seats for people’s representatives (MPs elected by commoners). This did not come to pass. Instead, Tonga’s parliament (Fale Alea ʻo Tonga) adjourned for the year. This angered the crowd. Armed with hammers, sticks, rocks and bricks, they vented their frustrations through the last means available to them: a riot.

On paper, Tonga had been a constitutional monarchy since 1875, when King George Tupou I adopted a modern constitution. Though Tonga had been unified as a single entity since 1845, it wasn’t until the adoption of this constitution that Tonga became a ‘modern’ state. This constitution enshrined a parliamentary style of government that is similar to, but not exactly like, the ‘Westminster system’ developed in England.

This parliament held seats for hereditary nobles, as well as for representatives elected by commoners. While ostensibly upholding the principle of equal representation for nobles and commoners, as it often goes, the nobles and chiefs held most of the power in government. This is not to say that the nobles are, or were, necessarily a monolith, or that they voted as a bloc, since the nobles rarely formed a unified front of their own. But their class position granted them access to power and a proximity to the royal family that allowed them to politically outflank commoners, in parliament and beyond.

The Prime Minister and Cabinet were all appointed directly by the King. This was the case until 2014, when ‘Akilisi Pohiva of the Human Rights & Democracy Movement (which had formed the Democratic Party of the Friendly Islands by that time) was elected PM. The Human Rights & Democracy Movement (HRDM) is a liberal reformist movement, which aimed to reform the Tongan political system to squash corruption and adopt a more liberal-democratic structure which would strip the King of direct executive power.

On paper, Tonga had been a constitutional monarchy since 1875, when King George Tupou I adopted a modern constitution. Though Tonga had been unified as a single entity since 1845, it wasn’t until the adoption of this constitution that Tonga became a ‘modern’ state. This constitution enshrined a parliamentary style of government that is similar to, but not exactly like, the ‘Westminster system’ developed in England.

This parliament held seats for hereditary nobles, as well as for representatives elected by commoners. While ostensibly upholding the principle of equal representation for nobles and commoners, as it often goes, the nobles and chiefs held most of the power in government. This is not to say that the nobles are, or were, necessarily a monolith, or that they voted as a bloc, since the nobles rarely formed a unified front of their own. But their class position granted them access to power and a proximity to the royal family that allowed them to politically outflank commoners, in parliament and beyond.

The Prime Minister and Cabinet were all appointed directly by the King. This was the case until 2014, when ‘Akilisi Pohiva of the Human Rights & Democracy Movement (which had formed the Democratic Party of the Friendly Islands by that time) was elected PM. The Human Rights & Democracy Movement (HRDM) is a liberal reformist movement, which aimed to reform the Tongan political system to squash corruption and adopt a more liberal-democratic structure which would strip the King of direct executive power.

The Human Rights and Democracy Movement

Leaders of the 2006 Pangai Lahi protest. Photo: Linny Folau / Matangi Tonga.

The HRDM was founded in the 1970s, first as an informal grouping of liberal and democratically minded politicians, lawyers and professionals in Tonga. It was formalised in 1992 as the ‘Pro-Democracy Movement’, and it fielded candidates for the 1999 election. The HRDM/PDM had a political orientation which was never fully coherent. Its members were broadly Christians and Liberal, but did not have a wholly unified view of what kind of democratic system would be best for Tonga. By the 1999 election, its members and leadership included Dr Sione ‘Amanaki Havea (Wesleyan minister and developer of ‘Pacific theology’), Rev. Simote Vea (Wesleyan minister), Fr. Selwyn ‘Akau’ola (Roman-Catholic Priest and editor of the Tongan Catholic monthly Taumu’a Leilei), Prof. Futa Helu (founder of the liberal and independent ‘Atenisi Institute— both a high school and university), ‘Akilisi Pohiva (teacher, radio host, newsletter editor, and long-time democracy advocate), and many others.

While democratic pro-reform candidates won more seats than previously in the 1999 election, they received fewer votes. For example, in 1996, ‘Akilisi Pohiva got 9,149 votes in Tongatapu 1, while in 1999, he got 8,556. Of the nine People’s Representatives elected, five were pro-reform: ‘Akilisi Pohiva, ‘Uliti Uata (HRDM founder), Sunia Fili, Samiu Vaipulu, and ‘Esau Namoa. Their success, despite their fewer votes, is attributed mainly to their style of campaigning. Unlike traditional elections for People’s Representatives, the HRDM/PDM candidates campaigned as a bloc, running awareness campaigns in villages in electorates they intended to run in. However, it is important to note that People’s Representatives, even the more ideologically vocal ones, are mostly elected based on personal factors (familial relationships, etc).

Class in Tonga

King George Tupou VI (centre) with Tongan nobility. In Tonga, nobles have guaranteed seats in parliament. Photo: Tonga Independent News

Much of the political struggle for democratic reforms is influenced and heightened by class in Tonga. Class stratification in Tonga, and indeed the entire Pacific region, is complex. In Tonga, this involves different forms of social divisions which often overlap, and sometimes contradict each other. There are clans (ha’a) which fall under chiefly titles and estates owned by chiefs and nobles (hou’eiki). Hou’eiki maintain power in Tongan society (past and present) through various means. Their power is consolidated socially through faka’apa’apa (deference/respect). On the one hand, it is a form of social cooperation between peoples that crosses classes. On the other, it is a form of feudal obligation between rulers and the ruled.

Like other indigenous peoples worldwide, Tongan culture has a complex system of kinship. Tongan kinship survived modernisation, though it has changed form over the centuries and decades since. Kinship establishes gender roles, patriarchal authority, and the transfer of property between generations. For example, in Tongan families, control over property is held by fathers and eldest male children/siblings. However, sisters have a higher ‘rank’ in the Tongan system of rank and power than brothers do. This contradicts the fact that the elder brother has more authority in the family/kāinga than the elder sister does. Despite their higher ‘rank’, sisters do not have authority over brothers. While both men and women are respected (faka’apa’apa), men are respected on the basis that they have power and authority, while women are respected on the basis that men have an obligation to care and provide for them.

This speaks nothing to the broader system of social class that developed both before and after capitalism took hold in the Pacific. Families do not tend to cross class lines. Families rarely if ever comprise both commoners and nobles. In the chiefly system, chiefs and nobles (the ‘eiki) ruled over estates, which were territorial divisions including both entire islands, and sections of islands. This class of chiefs and nobles had ruled the islands that made up Tonga for thousands of years. In modern Tonga, the rule of the chiefs and nobles is less extreme, but nonetheless persists in spite of centuries of capitalist modernity.

Prelude and aftermath of the 2006 riot

Politically, Tonga is a strange country. It has an ostensibly democratic (and unicameral) parliament, though it wasn’t until the 2010s that elections actually changed the composition of government. The HRDM campaigned strongly on government transparency, anti-corruption, limiting the power of the monarch, and liberal democratic reforms such as a separation of powers and ‘rule of law’. In 2006, HRDM leaders urged and supported a street protest in Pangai Lahi. This protest was held on June 1st, when Tonga’s parliament opened. This peaceful protest was suppressed by the Tongan state, which then launched fines and legal proceedings against its organisers (‘Akilisi Pohiva, Teisina Fuko, and others), though many pleaded not guilty. If only the monarchist government had the gift of foresight — as the suppression of this peaceful protest only increased tensions which would boil over in November with the riots.

The aftermath of the riots in November 2006 saw the immediate launching of a state of emergency by the royalist government (headed rather reluctantly by Feleti ‘Fred’ Sevele, who had taken over as PM after the resignation of ʻUlukālala Lavaka Ata/future king Tupou VI) which lasted until the early 2010s. The state launched a legal assault against the democracy movement: democratic leaders such as ‘Akilisi Pohiva and others were arrested and charged with sedition in 2007, though these charges did not stick, and Pohiva went on to successfully be elected to the electorate of Tongatapu in the 2008 election.

Almost immediately following the riots, pacific rim imperial forces from Australia and New Zealand entered Tonga — ostensibly to help the government ‘restore order’. 110 soldiers, along with 44 police officers, arrived from AU/NZ to supplement the Tongan police and military (the Australian contingent was comprised of the 1st Battalion RAR). What followed was a little over a month of imperialist terror: both foreign and Tongan police and military rounded up hundreds of protestors and non-protestors alike. Soldiers assaulted everybody, young and old, for as little as drinking alcohol on the street. The imperialists withdrew their forces in December 2006, though the damage had already been done.

The 2008 election was an upswing for the democracy movement, which showed its resilience against the anti-democratic state of emergency. ‘Akilisi Pohiva criticised the continuation of the state of emergency:

“I don’t see any reason for government to continue to hold on to the emergency power. There are a lot of allegations against the Prime Minister and some of the ministers. And I think the government, especially the Prime Minister and the Minister of Tourism, they are under threat and they still have to respond to so many allegations.” (RNZ, 28 January 2008).

While the state of emergency persisted, in 2008 the democratic movement elected six representatives: four from the HRDM, and two from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). The PDP was formed in 2005, after its founding members were expelled from the HRDM/PDM over disputes around candidacies. It was established at a founding meeting at the ‘Atenisi Institute, and included ‘Atenisi founder Futa Helu. Police Minister Clive Edwards, long hated by the movement for his role in supporting the monarchist government in his capacity as police boss, was also a founding member of the PDP (known as the Tongan Democratic Party in 2005). The PDP was also the first registered political party in Tonga, since the HRDM was not a registered political party. The cracks were beginning to show in the ‘pro-democracy movement’, which was never a single unified force to begin with.

In 2010, democratic reforms were adopted. The number of People’s Representatives was increased from nine to seventeen, giving commoners more representatives than nobles. There were now four political parties: the Democratic Party (founded by the HRDM/PDM), the People’s Democratic Party (now defunct), the Sustainable Nation-Building Party (formed by Auckland-based lawyer Sione Fonua, now defunct), and the Tongan Democratic Labor Party (an attempt at a social democratic party, formed by members of the Public Services Association, seemingly defunct).

Results of the 2010 General Election, by constituency. Graphic: FelipeRev / CC0

The 2010 election had mixed results for the democrats. While the Democratic Party earned less votes than its HRDM parent did in 2008 (partly due to the electoral reforms changing numbers, and new parties running after splits in the movement), it won more seats (as more seats were given to commoners). The People’s Democratic Party, which won two seats in 2008, lost both of these in 2010. However, this election set the stage for the democratic party’s historic win in 2014: when ‘Akilisi Pohiva became the first commoner to be elected PM. Pohiva would govern as PM from 2014 until his death in 2019.

The often overlooked history of Tonga’s democracy movement, as divided as it is, has many lessons for the international socialist movement. It shows that even in countries as deeply conservative as Tonga, there can, and does, exist a (at the very least liberal) reformist current willing to mobilise politically for changes to the system. But, crucially, we must recognise that liberal reformers cannot bring true democratic change, nor lead the workers and toilers to power.

The HRDM/PDM and DPFI (Democratic Party of the Friendly Islands) has waged an admirable struggle for democratic reform in Tonga. However, it has shown itself to be incapable of taking the big steps necessary to establishing a truly democratic system. Most importantly, it is a liberal-bourgeois movement influenced by Christian ministers and intellectuals, who have no interest in abolishing the monarchy or establishing a republic.

The events of 2006 were nothing short of an attempted revolution. It came after decades of political organising by the democratic movement, and historic strikes by public service workers in 2005. The events of November shook the royalists and the nobles to their core, and they worked hard to smash the commoners and restore order, with the backing of their pacific rim imperialist allies in Australia and NZ.

But peace and order are fleeting. It is more than possible for a revolutionary upsurge to take place a second time in Tonga. It leaves open the question of leadership, particularly, revolutionary leadership. Tonga lacks a socialist movement, though the attempt at a social democratic Labor Party may have laid the groundwork for one. With a suffocating political atmosphere marred by suppression and intimidation, it seems likely that the development of revolutionary socialist leadership for the Tongan workers and toilers must develop in exile – amongst the diaspora living in the pacific rim and beyond.