Local media in the Solomon Islands have been accused of compromising their independence by entering into agreements with Chinese news organizations and accepting thousands of dollars of equipment from the Chinese embassy.
Since the Solomon Islands government signed a high-profile security agreement with China in March last year, some newspapers in the Pacific country have received vehicles, cameras, phones and printing machinery that costs thousands of dollars from the Chinese government, via its local embassy, local journalists said.
Some have raised concern about the gifts and the continued close dialogue between media organizations in China and the Solomon Islands.
Photo: AP
The Solomon Star newspaper received nearly US$140,000 in funding from the Chinese government and in return pledged to “promote the truth about China’s generosity and its true intentions to help develop” the Pacific Islands country, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) reported.
A funding proposal sent from the Solomon Star to China’s embassy in Honiara, seen by the OCCRP, said that decrepit equipment was causing editions to come out late and “curtailing news flow about China’s generous and lightning economic and infrastructure development in Solomon Islands.”
The OCCRP counted about a dozen instances in the proposal in which funding was said to be needed to tell the Chinese story in a positive light, said the organization’s lead editor for the Pacific, Aubrey Belford.
In an editorial published on Tuesday, the Solomon Star said it had nothing to hide and that it had received funding from China.
The paper denied that the funding had affected its editorial independence, saying it had published “news items not in the favor of China and the Chinese embassy in Honiara never issued a reproachment.”
The Solomon Star said it had also sought funding from Australia and the US, but received no response.
“It’s a complaint we see from Pacific media who have struggled to receive the funding they need to continue as unbiased news organizations,” Belford said. “There’s been a bottomless pit of money for the Pacific if it’s national security or detention of asylum seekers, but when it comes to support civil society and a free press the region has been starved and China has stepped into the void.”
The funding proposal was for money that would go toward printing equipment for the newspaper and a broadcast tower for its affiliated radio station.
A journalist from the Solomon Star, speaking anonymously, said support from the Chinese government and Chinese media partners also arrived in the form of equipment.
The newsroom received a vehicle, cameras, laptops, iPhones and a drone, the journalist said.
“Our editor is part of the team who attended meetings at the [Chinese] embassy here, and these items have been delivered to us. In return we were told to be a bit more sensitive when covering China issues,” the journalist added.
Similar gifts were delivered to the Island Sun newspaper from the Chinese embassy in Honiara, said Ofani Eremae, the paper’s former editor.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) removed former minister of foreign affairs Qin Gang (秦剛) from his post after an investigation concluded that he had conducted an affair and fathered a child while serving as ambassador to the US, the Wall Street Journal reported. Top officials were told in August that a CCP inquiry into Qin uncovered “lifestyle issues,” the newspaper reported yesterday, citing people familiar with the situation that it did not describe. That phrase usually means sexual misbehavior of some type in the parlance of Chinese officialdom. Two of the people said the affair led to the birth of a child in
GUNNED DOWN: The Canadian PM said there were credible allegations that India was connected to the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey on June 18 India yesterday dismissed allegations that its government was linked to the killing of a Sikh activist in Canada as “absurd,” expelling a senior Canadian diplomat and accusing Canada of interfering in India’s internal affairs. It came a day after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described what he called credible allegations that India was connected to the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, an advocate of Sikh independence from India who was gunned down on June 18 outside a Sikh cultural center in Surrey, British Columbia, and Canada expelled a top Indian diplomat. “Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a
LOST BATTLE: The Varroa mite, which Canberra has called the ‘most serious pest’ to face bees, would cause serious economic damage, an ecologist said Australia yesterday abandoned its fight to eradicate the destructive Varroa mite, an invasive parasite responsible for the collapse of honeybee populations across the planet. Desperate to keep Varroa out of the country, authorities have destroyed more than 14,000 infected beehives since the tiny red-brown pest was first detected north of Sydney in June last year. The government said its US$64 million eradication plan could not stop the mite from spreading, and the country’s beekeepers should now prepare to live with the incursion. “The recent spike in new detections have made it clear that the Varroa mite infestation is more widespread and has
SECURITY: Wang met with the US national security adviser in Malta over the weekend, with the US side noting the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) yesterday headed to Russia for security talks after two days of meetings with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan over the weekend in Malta. China’s top foreign policy official will be in Russia until Thursday for a round of China-Russia strategic security consultations, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a brief statement. The US and China are at odds over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. China has refrained from taking sides in the war, saying that while a country’s territory must be respected, the West needs to consider Russia’s security concerns about NATO’s