A 60 Minutes TV crew, including Channel Nine reporter Liam Bartlett, have been detained in a hotel on the Pacific island archipelago of Kiribati after they arrived in the country without appropriate media permits.
Bartlett and the crew were reportedly there to film a story about last month’s decision by the Kiribatian government to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan and establish diplomatic relations with China.
Ioera Simon, who works at the front desk of the hotel where the crew were being detained in Tarawa, said that immigration officials showed up at the hotel yesterday morning and two officials were stationed outside the rooms where the crew were staying.
The group were allowed to leave their rooms, but not the grounds of the hotel, she said.
“They are allowed to leave [their rooms] for food,” Simon said. “They are kept in the hotel. They seem all right. A bit upset, but OK.”
The group had been asked to remain in their hotel after they arrived in the country without appropriate media permits and had made false declarations on their arrival cards, saying they were in the country for “meetings,” a Kiribatian immigration official said.
The official who asked not to be named, as he was not speaking on behalf of the immigration department, said that the crew was “intercepted” on Tuesday morning while filming at the closed Taiwanese commission.
“This is a clear deliberate breach and undermining of the Kiribati immigration laws,” he said. “This shows that this group is not a very good media or journalist group. They pursue their own plans without checking with the proper office concerned that they had permits.”
“Plus they didn’t tell the truth upon arrival, that’s the reason why we asked them to return to the hotel,” he said.
The official said that while the group had made contact with the Kiribatian Office of the President before arrival and had been sent the application for a media permit to enter the country for reporting purposes, they had not sent it back to the office and therefore had not been approved to enter the country.
In a statement, Channel Nine disputed this version of events, saying: “The 60 Minutes crew traveled to Kiribati on Monday. Before leaving, they submitted applications for filming approval. On arrival they arranged a meeting with authorities including the executive assistant of the president and a senior representative of the immigration department to discuss the application. Further forms were submitted and a request was made for expedited approval.”
“That request was declined this morning and the 60 Minutes team were asked to remain in their hotel until the next flight out, which was their scheduled departure flight,” Channel Nine said.
The immigration official said that despite their infraction, the group had not received any penalty except the request not to leave the hotel until their departure.
“There’s no deportation, we don’t lock them up in an immigration holding cell, they just relax at the hotel,” he said.
Two immigration officials were stationed at the hotel to prevent the crew from leaving, the official said, adding that earlier yesterday the crew had tried to leave the hotel and had been asked to return by the officials.
The crew had had visitors and he suspected they were trying to make a documentary from inside the hotel, the official said.
“We never experienced a media group like this, with these people undermining the authorities, talking back to them, teaching us our history and how to run this country, and they have no verification and no rights to come here,” he said.
The Pacific Islands News Association, the leading regional news organization, issued a statement saying that it was “concerned” by reports of the detention of the Australian crew and were carrying out an investigation through its own media partners on the ground in Kiribati.
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
CONFLICT: The move is the latest escalation of the White House’s pitched battle with Harvard University as more than US$2 billion is suspended US President Donald Trump’s administration threatened to assume ownership of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of patents from Harvard University, accusing the Ivy League college of failing to comply with the law on federal research grants. In a letter to Harvard president Alan Garber on Friday, US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said the university is failing its obligations to US taxpayers, paving the way for a process that could result in the government seizing its patents under the Bayh-Dole Act. Harvard has until Sept. 5 to prove it is complying with the requirements, including whether it showed a
RSS